Blog | IntraStage

Engineers and Standards – The Love/Hate Relationship

They hate them often – and usually – when someone else tells them which to use.

They love them often – and usually – when they are the ones writing them.

An engineer’s job is to solve problems, to innovate. So, coming up with a standard is fun and challenging. Using someone else’s standard often is not. There is a sense of being a “cog in the machine”. Time is spent learning someone else’s standard and how to apply it, which is like “being told what to do”. Creating a standard is a problem to solve. You are solving that problem as you create the standard. Using someone else’s standard is like being told the problem and immediately being told the solution, without the joy of solving it yourself.

This is why I believe that the most experienced test engineers love standards. Because the experienced ones have already gone through the process of solving various challenges, and so they understand the problems and are open to seeing different solutions.

So, the “hate” comes when an engineer doesn’t get a chance to solve the problem on his own. The “love” comes when the problem has been solved, and the engineer wants to see the “best” or “more perfect” solution. Or simply to automate that problem because she has moved on to another challenge. Because while an engineer loves to solve a challenge the first time (and hates it if someone gives her the answer too soon), engineers also hate solving the same problem over and over again.

At IntraStage, we are constantly trying to make better standards for test data and test configuration. Our team has worked in this space a long time, and we have worked with hundreds of test engineers. While our goal is to create a world-class standard, we are also trying to make it fast and easy to train engineers in the use of the standard. We also have to evolve the standard over time, as test engineering continues to increase in complexity. Finally, we have to leave hooks for expansion on our standards, because every customer has custom details that the standard has to account for.

Why does everyone love Dashboards?

”Dashboards” as a concept recently became popular in the last 7 years. These dashboards are computer-based visual indications of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of metrics within an organization and are now used by Executives, Managers and Staff to track everyday activities to make better decisions. For example, a Manufacturing Operations dashboard would show such KPIs as Yield, Failure Paretos, Equipment utilization etc.

The evolution of dashboards is an interesting one and can be traced back as far the first century AD. For an interesting read on “data visualization” I would recommend Stephen Few’s book “Now You See It”. Historically Data Visualization has followed an interesting path:
-2nd century: first use of tables to organize numbers
-18th century: first graphs and charts were “invented” on paper
-1980s: first widespread use of visualizing data through Bar charts, line graphs, pie charts etc

The 1980s saw Data Visualization come into its own primarily because of high speed computers and rich graphics interfaces. What is happening now in the first part of the 21rst century is the ability to store massive amounts of data in a cheap fashion and being able to access that data conveniently through the internet. This has directly given rise to the use of Dashboards which can quickly aggregate and provide Users directly relevant KPIs out of these massive amounts of data.

The question for most users is: What are relevant KPIs that I need track? A good rule of thumb to understand your KPIs is to understand how your or your group’s performance is measured by the organization…if there is some raw data that supports that performance then a dashboard could be useful. IntraStage has developed multiple dashboard views for Test, Manufacturing, Quality and R&D environments. If you would like to contribute your views on what KPIs are relevant to your job, we would love to hear them…please comment on our LinkedIn Discussion post.

Happy dashboarding!

Medical Device Recall: What’s the Cause?

There have been a few (including those here, here and here) Class I product recalls of medical devices in the past month or so, particularly in regards to infusion devices having a higher flow rate than specified.

The financial repercussions are relatively obvious, but what’s less obvious are the root causes for these device failures, especially since they come from several different manufacturers. What kind of evaluation processes would a quality engineer have to run through in order to determine the reason for failure? How would his or her team have to prove the strength of their design, particularly since 2010 the FDA has been focused on preventing problems with infusion pumps due to a perceived deficiency in design and engineering? What kinds of test data would they have to show to the FDA to validate the quality of their product, and more importantly, ensure patient health and safety?

NI Week 2011

IntraStage is going to have a booth at NI Week in Austin next week,.

If you’re going to be at NI Week, come by and visit us at booth 526-if you haven’t used our software before, take the opportunity to test out our fully functional demo software. If you’re an existing customer, come by and get some of our giveaways. And we’ll be announcing a new addition to the IntraStage software catalog, so check that out and the accompanying iPod contest.

Sharing the Data: Why Contract Manufacturers Feel the Pain

It’s a daunting challenge for a Contract Manufacturer (CM) to aggregate and report data to a customer. Typically, they have to use manual labor to take the appropriate data, parse it into their system, and manually crunch the data (using Excel sheets or similar tools) to generate the report. The man-hours necessary from technicians, management and analysts can quickly add up and the labor costs can eat into the profitability of the contract.

In the next few years, the ability to provide on-demand test data for review and analysis will provide contract manufacturers with a more compelling partnership proposal, especially in comparison to other CMs which don’t offer their customers with visible, clear test data. Those that do offer data and teamwork to the customers will have the upper hand in proving the quality and efficiency of their labor, equipment and processes to prospective and current partners. To all our CM managers: how much nonproductive time do you spend aggregating data for your OEMs?