James L Adams—People and Products

A Product I Hate

One of the reasons I hate to shop for groceries, aside from the ever-increasing size of grocery stores which makes it increasingly difficult to find what I want, and the profusion of marketing, “deals”, and other would-be enticements to buy things I don’t want, are the toilet paper style produce bags, available in either  low mount or high mount as seen in the photographs.  They are shown in their at-rest position, just waiting to anger the innocent.

  Like old toilet paper rollers, these devices are capable, (especially if low on bags), of not only unrolling more bags than desired, but of actually leaving their housing to festoon the bags across the floor.  The bags themselves are difficult to properly tear off the roll, confusing as to which way is “up”, and challenging indeed to open so that the payload can be inserted.

The photographs below give a hint of this, but you have probably experienced the frustration of trying to use them many times yourself.  If not, I would appreciate knowing where you shop. 

The first photo shows the bags lying flat (notice lack of marking where you tear them apart).The bags are folded in a strange  manner, and the next photo shows what you see as you try to figure out how to open one.  The photo after that is an indication of the opening when/if you succeed.  How about trying to put a head of lettuce into that confusion of thinner than tissue plastic.  And even if you do succeed in opening it, the next photo of the bottom of the fully open bag shows that they are diabolically designed so that the bottom is not obvious.

They are not only functionally a nightmare, they have a sleazy feel, an ugly look, and despite the optimistic note encouraging returning them to the store, probably are not very favorable to the ecology.  Also they are so thin that I have a few times succeeded in dropping a purchase through the bottom, which is non-relaxing to other shoppers.

 As a positive, they result in the opportunity to meet nice people.  I usually shop during the day, when many of the other shoppers seem to be mothers with children who would rather be somewhere else.  Today, I got to know a nice lady who had an unhappy child in a stroller and was carrying a baby who was having a temporary meltdown.  How about trying to open one of these bags and put produce in it with one hand while trying to calm down a couple of unhappy kids?  I  helped her with the bags (not the kids) and she was so obviously grateful that it alleviated the anger I had accrued from my own previous bag experience.

Another good piece of news is shown in the last photograph (apple by mirror).  Upon reaching home and emptying one of said bags I found that I had won an apple with three of the pesky little labels that you have to either swallow, spit out,  or peel off.  Wow!  Must have been because I am a member of the Safeway club.

 

Tegu, Honduras, and a quality product

Chris Haughey, the founder and head of Tegu Toys was the speaker in the course last Thursday, and did a remarkable job of not only telling a compelling story, but discussing the interaction of product quality and economics.  Tegu toys is located in Honduras, but sells its products mostly in the U.S. and other developed countries.  The website for Tegu Toys is here, and it not only describes their products, but also gives information on the story and goals of the company.  There are other websites about Tegu, because it has caught the attention of many people because of its idealistic goals and determination to produce high quality products. An article about Chris is here.

 In brief, Chris graduated with an engineering degree from Stanford and went to work for the Boston Consulting Group.  A business trip to Hondurus along with a deep interest in helping the economy of a poor country made him decide to quit his job, move to Honduras, and attempt to do something about their extremely high unemployment rate by starting a company to make jobs. After some thinking he decided that since excellent hardwood was available, and since there seemed to be a demand for high quality wooden toys in places such as the U.S., high quality wooden toys would be an excellent product, so with some help from his friends and his brother, he started Tegu.Their products are kits of beautifully finished wooden building blocks that contain internal magnets, allowing  them to be combined as desired.

 Chris did an excellent job of telling the story of not only starting a toy company, but doing so by employing people who had little education and few skills, and trying to keep the product both extremely high in quality and also affordable.  Like many company founders, he consistently discovered expenses and  problems he had underestimated, and had to cut costs over time,  but as of now, the company is in good shape and gaining visibility.  And the product, although expensive by many standards, is very effective.  Chris passed out a number of samples to the students, which resulted in an appreciable noise level of clicks and clacks as they happily played with them, even though they were intended for people fifteen years younger.

Tegu is a fascinating combination of idealism and economics, and experiences both the benefits and advantages of operating a factory in a poor country.  It is taking advantage of low labor costs, but bearing the weight of slow government responses and the complexity of international business.  The class was very positive about his presentation, but afterwards, I overheard several of them discussing the differences and similarities between operating a factory in Hondurus for products to be sold in countries such as the U.S., and outsourcing products to China.  Neither helps unemployment in the U.S.  but they tended to think that building products in Hondurus is better than building products in China — complicated, these international issues.  My reaction was one of being impressed.  I think I need to go visit them.

Stanford Good Products Bad Products Course Update Again

Since my post of  February 11, the students in Professor Beach’s ME 314 course have done many things.  They have read and discussed Chapters 8 and 9 of my book.  The title of chapter 8 is "Symbolism and cultural Values: Who Are We?"  The subtitles are Products, Symbolism, and Cultures, Products and National cultures, Products and subcultures, and Globalism and cultures.  Chapter 9 is "Global Contraints: Does the Product Fit a Finite Earth and Its Inhabitants?"   Subtitles are Big Problems, The Role of Industrially Produced Products, Why These Problems, Response to change, Revolutionary Approaches, The Iceberg, Regulation and Laws, and Now what?

The students have continued to put examples of good and bad products on the class blog (see Feb. 11 post), and student groups have continued to review them, report on their favorites, and bring up further questions for class discussion.  Dave Beach has also begun showing some examples of the student’s story videos, which are extensions of the discovery videos  made early in the quarter..

 The class has also interacted with two more guest speakers, Peter Mondavi, the co-Proprietor of Charles Krug Winery, and Nancy Gioia, Director of Ford Motor Company’s Electrification Program, and also presently of the integration of information hardware and software into its vehicles. An article on Mondavi is here, and information on Gioia is here.  Both of them have positions where product quality, both real and perceived, is of great importance.  They have spent their careers worrying about issues of product quality in two areas where it has received a great deal of attention (wine and motor vehicles).

 Gioia’s problem with integrating information equipment into vehicles is particularly difficult.  The number one goal of vehicles has to remain safety.  But the builders of automobiles are under tremendous pressure to include digital devices ranging from smart phones to increasingly complex navigation and television systems to internet access, and vehicle features ranging from increasing reporting on vehicle components to driving aids.  The problem is that of both including these kind of features and not distracting the driver to the point where driving becomes more dangerous—a  case where a perceived increase in the quality of vehicles could result in a dramatic increase in  automotive accidents. Autonomous vehicles? Gioia guessed maybe iin 40 years.

There will be  two more speakers from outside of Stanford, I will give a talk on achieving higher quality, and the last two and a half sessions will be devoted to student presentations on companies they have researched who do a particularly good job in producing high quality products.  I will be writing two or three more posts recapping the remainder of the course.  It is going very well.  Should you want more details on the course than I have been able to  put in these posts, you should contact Professor Dave Beach in the Stanford Engineering School.  His e-mail address is [email protected].

The Use of Capital - Accumulate It, or Spend It?

These days the media is paying a lot of attention to large amounts of capital that are in a sense dormant, in that they are not being used in ways that will produce jobs and income through revolutionary products that will improve the quality of our lives as well as the economy.  I recently read an interview  in Wired magazine by Jeff Howe of Clayton Christensen, a professor in the Harvard Business School, and a column in the February 17 New York times by Thomas Friedman, both on this topic.  They are both outstanding thinkers and writers.

 I first became aware of Clayton Christensen in 1997  when he wrote a book that I loved entitled The Innovator’s Dilemma. At the time I was up to my ears teaching at Stanford and consulting in Silicon Valley, and the prevailing feeling was that innovation was bound to win.  This feeling still exists.  Chistensen’s book, wonderfully enough, was a well-backed argument that you could build a company on innovation, do everything right, and still lose.  His thesis was that as businesses prosper, they focus on innovations at the high value-added end of the market to maximize growth and profit, and overlook newer firms at the low-margin end that will come up with revolutionary products that may obsolete the products of the older company . The March 2013 issue of Wired magazine contains the interview with him, which is here.

In his interview (entitled "the Disruptor") he speaks of potentially more socially useful ways to utilize capital than merely aquiring it, and goes so far as to blame business  professors like himself for the phenomenon, since they have traditionally been teaching students and managers to measure profitability based on return on invested capital.  This causes the familiar tendency of businesses to try to make more money with fewer resources, and use the resulting gain in capital to make more capital.  The result is an unwillingness to invest in long-term innovative projects which although they might tie up capital for a longer time, would not only produce growth and profit, but more jobs and income for the average person.  He speaks of migratory capital (it goes to investments that produce a quick return) as opposed to productive capital (it results in major new directions) and clearly believes we need more of the latter. Christensen will have a new book out next year entitled The Capitalists’ Dilemma, and I am eager to read it. I believe in Capitalism, but it doesn’t solve all problems.

 The very next day I read Thomas Friedman’s column in the New York Times, entitled "How to  Unparalyze Us" which focused upon  the present tendency of  individuals and companies to store money. It is here.  He began his editorial by pointing out that in his state of the union speech, President Obama had proposed investing one billion dollars in a National Network for Manufacturing Innovation. He then mentioned the difficulty Obama will face getting the money out of Congress.  He then pointed out that Apple is currently sitting on $137 billion cash in the bank, which if spent would undoubtedly result in more good and remunerative jobs.  Apple is not alone, and Friedman feels that the uncertainty in the nation’s economy, partly due to inability of Congress to act, is responsible for this hoarding mentality, and if people and companies sitting on large piles of money would begin to spend it, more and better jobs would appear, and the recovery would benefit greatly.

 I thought that reading a near simultaneous column by Friedman and an interview with Christensen talking about the same thing made this a good topic to talk about.  I have long believed that since productivity is an efficiency number made from dividing output (products) by input (traditionally labor), one should be careful of increasing it too much by decreasing the denominator, since historically, when labor has gotten  mad enough, bad things have  happened.  And when labor is lowered enough (huge stores with no one to help the customer and ridiculously long checkout lines) everyone gets mad.

 Although certainly capital is needed for rainy days, the health of an economy seems to have to do with money being in motion.  Although I am not an economist, and this is counter to the depression ethic taught to me by my parents, I am a believer. Hopefully business schools are thinking deeply about the issue. Having become annoyed with wealthy individuals using their money to make more money through investments with no “trickle down”, it would not add to our gross national happiness to become annoyed with businesses doing the same thing rather than producing more revolutionary (and of course high quality) products. 

 

 

The State of the Union (and manufacturing)

I liked the President’s state of the union message for its specific listing of “things to do”.  Certainly the things he mentioned could use a bit of fixing.  I realize that many people in the country are against anything Obama is for, and that we don’t have the money to accomplish all of these things and reduce the national debt.  And it remains to be seen whether Congress is one national group or two party groups—in other words, can they accomplish anything other than posturing on behalf of their particular constituents. But the speech was definitely an upper.

 I of course also liked the attention he paid to manufacturing.  But as politicians tend to do, he spoke in grand figures — new jobs, growing economy, insourcing, bolstering of the middle class, more funding for research and development, and encouraging schools to focus on useable skills and knowledge.  These are all good, but I wish he would  have said something about product quality — like U.S. products are going to become the best in the world.

I was pleased that Obama spoke of joint university-industry manufacturing efforts, and I hope that the government and industry will support more of them.  Such efforts can produce much needed insights in design and manufacturing as well as better training for people who will do the work.  But in order for them to succeed, universities must accept more applied work as academically respectable. The name of the game in highly ranked universities is research, and at present research, and even interdisciplinary research, is performed by experts in an established discipline.  Disciplines in engineering and business are extremely fond of mathematics and science (both natural and social)  because such intellectual activities lead to academic visibility among scholars as well as producing important additions to knowledge and funding to pay for laboratories and graduate students. Faculty members are generally hired not only because of their teaching ability, but also, and perhaps primarily, because of their likelihood of becoming a leader in their academic field.

 It is certainly possible to do research on manufacturing in situations in which mathematics and science (both natural and social) can be applied.  Stanford’s Graduate Business School  and the Department of  Management Systems and Engineering in the School of Engineering  do such things.  And in fact both of these Schools pay attention to design, but more at the feasibility and prototype level, than on final design and production..  In fact I wrote the Good Products Bad Products book partly because of frustration with the little attention in engineering and business schools to aspects of product quality that are difficult to approach quantitatively and logically.

 Our engineering faculty members bring in large amounts of research money to support their laboratories and their students, and like those in other top engineering schools tend toward science and quantitative problem solving.  And that is what causes institutions to be highly ranked, because the ranking is often done by faculty members in other schools.  The Stanford engineering school, partly because of a history of success, focuses on potential breakthrough areas—nano technology, energy production, digital hardware and software, robotics, biotechnology, and so on. Such fields have huge potential payoffs and provide major intellectual challenges.  But manufacturing requires familiarity with more traditional industry and has a bit of a  “nuts and bolts” nature.

 Manufacturing is now getting an increasing amount of attention, but it still seems to be difficult to convert into institutional academic success. I once chaired a rather traditional Industrial Engineering department, which was oriented toward manufacturing.  But it has now been combined with two other academically more glamorous departments, one previously named Operations Research and the other Engineering Economic Systems.  The result (Management Science and Engineering) is a larger, and academically perhaps more successful department, but contains few faculty members who could design a factory or program a robot.  I once chaired a School of Engineering study by a committee including professors from many parts of the  University who were interested in manufacturing, which I thought detailed an excellent university-wide program in manufacturing.  It was not accepted, partly because it included a co-op program involving industry—clearly below the lofty nature of the university.

 The Engineering School presently contains a strong design group in the Mechanical Engineering Department, and the very popular Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, both of which stress creative design, But the Product Realization Laboratory of the design group (mentioned in previous posts), chaired by Professor David Beach, which focuses on integrated design and manufacturing, is the only formal group in the school that is dedicated to the manufacture of hardware.  And traditionally, although extremely successful at its work, it has had problems defining and securing funding for research and hiring tenure-line faculty. I will suggest that it invite Obama to join its advisory board.

 

The Stanford Good Products Bad Products course again

Since my last post on the course (Feb 3). the students have read Chapter 7 of my book, entitled  “Aesthetics, Elegance, and Sophistication: Wisdom Through Experience.”.  The subsections are Aesthetics and Industrial Products, A Bit of Background on Industrial Design, Elegance and Sophistication, Product Form and Function”, and Some Concerns on Today’s Aesthetics”.   Once again I would like to refer you to the blog containing students assignments and comments that is here.  It will let you know what these words mean to the students.  This blog is being maintained by Ashish Goel, one of the two Teaching Assistants in the course, and who from my viewpoint is adding greatly  not only to the student exercises, but to the content of the course through the blog. It is stimulating discussion and the students are definitely understanding the messages of each chapter of the book,  Also the student groups that are summarizing the individual choices are doing an exceptional job not only of emphasizing the message, but coming up with additional questions for the class to discuss.

           As is often the case when seeking examples of beauty, elegance, and sophistication, the students are lured toward high cost products.  Certainly such qualities are to be found in many (not all) luxury items.  But I am always pleased when they find examples of  utilitarian articles that display such characteristics. The photos show three that I happen to think qualify —an airplane propeller, a small incredibly low-priced Japanese garden tool, and a human femur.

 

The femur is not manufactured in a factory, and therefore does not directly qualify for the course (although were I a student I might submit it just to "enrich" the discussion), but it is certainly elegant and sophisticated and you can be  proud of owning one in your very own leg.

The class also continued to review the student discovery videos and talk about product quality in general.  But the speaker of the week unknowingly did an excellent job of bringing up the topic of chapter 8 In my book— Symbolism and Cultural Values— which I will say a few words about in my next post.  His name is Michael Topolovac,  a Stanford graduate who has spoken to the class several times and become a good friend of Dave Beach.  He calls himself a serial entrepreneur, and certainly deserves the title. He first founded and served as CEO of Light and Motion, a company that  produced underwater photo equipment. It was motivated by his interest in diving and in photography.  But having developed software for handling the materials and scheduling of this company, he became co-founder and CEO of Arena Solutions,  a company developing product lifecycle management( PLM)  solutions for manufacturers and their global supply  chains.  He told the story of both of these companies, including not only what he did right, but also in hindsight what he did wrong—a rare and valuable input from people who speak to classes about their accomplishments. 

     But as to  culture, he is now co-founder of Crave (his co-founder being Ti Chang, an industrial designer with a history of designing products for women). The Crave websight is here.  It will tell you something of the company and something of Michael.  Its first products are vibrators for women, sex toys if you would, but what sex toys.  They are based on serious market research, a great deal of prototyping and testing, and are designed and manufactured with an eye toward elegance and beauty.  The goal of the company is to facilitate women’s pleasure in a way that is 180 degrees removed from present day vibrators, the seamy image they portray, and the tacky environment in which they are sold.  The company is, if you would, going for extreme quality.

 I truly enjoyed watching the class response to Michael, because he was talking of a topic that was awkward in the typical Stanford classroom culture.  They students were interested, but not totally involved in his discussion of the first two companies.  But they definitely woke up when he turned to Crave.  One of the women in the class described the phenomenon well.  She claimed than when he began his discussion of Crave, every woman in the class blushed and looked away from him.  But by the middle of the class, all of the students, women and men, were highly interested, because Michael is an extraordinarily bright person, and with his co-founder, is serious about his mission.  The Duet, the initial product of the company, might also be considered a luxury item, but I would bet that even though it was not his reason for talking to the class, he might have sold a few of them.  And he definitely gets my award for guest lecture bravery above and beyond the call of duty.

 

 

Product Quality and Population

Some day there will be a gravestone some place that will read  “here lies James L. Adams, a kind and caring man, who died from a heart attack in stalled traffic”.  I hate being trapped in such things, aware of my life ticking away and helpless to do anything about it. One of the blessings of being retired, is the ability to choose driving times when crowds are at a minimum.  But this takes some thinking, because where I live the commuting periods are long (flex time and lots of people commuting to work in Silicon Valley ), and many people are on the road shopping and going to restaurants around lunch time.  At times like these, the traffic is terrible.

 But the other day I needed to be in the Sacramento Valley in the morning and back at Stanford by 5:00 p.m., with a few interim stops thrown in.  The trip was only possible by car.  I left at 5:30 a.m., which let me beat the commuting traffic pretty well, although the incoming traffic was already bumper to bumper and moving slowly because of people living far away in more affordable housing but working in the valley.  But coming back I could not beat the traffic, ran out of back roads, and got caught.

I escaped my heart attack by musing about once good products that were no longer compatible with increased population density.  The automobile is a truly sophisticated product in many ways —capable of carrying one long distances at high speeds in comfort. Still great if one drives around Eastern Oregon or West Texas—less great shopping in New York City or commuting in Los Angeles (photo by Monica Almeida/The New York Times). If too many of them are put together it becomes a terrible product – a small cell enclosing one and barely moving, if at all, while it pollutes the ecosphere, devours petroleum, and causes one to endure unhealthy changes in one’s vital signs and exhibit sometimes violently anti-social behavior.  The present move toward “autonomous” vehicles is probably partly motivated by the fantasy that traffic will move more rapidly and one can entertain oneself by drinking, texting, watching TV, and sleeping as one is transported to work and back.  But it may also have the effect of depriving the traveler of diversion and allow him/her more free time to curse and extend one’s middle finger toward others.

 There are many products that work well in less populated areas (firearms, un-muffled engines, weed burners,) but not well in cities.  Can you think of a few? This probably explains some of the differences in attitudes of people (and our good congressional representatives) toward such issues as high speed railroads and the environment. I would guess that people drilling for oil and gas in North Dakota experience less criticism than those who built platforms off of the shore of Santa Barbara California. And shooting game birds in Wyoming farmland is more acceptable than shooting pigeons in San Francisco’s  Union Square.

 I would also guess that some of the resistance people have to ever tightening regulations might result from having grown up in more sparsely populated areas and who remember freedoms that are no longer acceptable in densely populated ones.   Even I am sometimes guilty of such behavior.  I could better get away with throwing the garbage out of the back door in my youth (when there were chickens and orange trees there rather than neighbors) than in my present yard in an upscale community, even though garbage is good compost. And how can people have the nerve to prevent me from using my fireplace?  Fireplaces were wonderful products when I grew up in an agricultural area – family and social centers and cheery winter heating.  Apparently not so good in suburban Santa Clara Valley, California these days.

 

 

 

 

Back to the Stanford Good Products Bad Products course (ME 314)

Since I have written a post about it, the course has had two more guest speakers, Kirk Hawkins, the co-founder of ICON Aircraft, and David Franchino, the head of Design Concepts. The web-site for ICON is here, and that for Design Concepts is here.  You can also find information on Hawkins and Franchino on the web. The students have also been viewing the discovery videos made by various student teams, which are oriented toward gaining new and hopefully surprising insights into product quality.  The assignment for these videos is here.

 Readings have included one from Diane Ackerman’s book Natural History of the Senses, and Chapter 6 from my Good Products, Bad Products book.  If you are not taking the course and have not read the book, the Chapter title is Products, Emotions, and Needs — Love, Hate, or Blah.  The sub sections are How Emotions Play a Role, the Complexity of Human Enotions, Diversity in Emotional Responses, The Mechanisms of Emotion, Human Needs, Needs and Emotions, and Need Finding,

 Emotion is obviously key to the subject matter of the course, although as I explain in the book, it is difficult to discuss in words and rigorously analyze. It is, after all, about feelings, and how do you describe or measure what it feels like to be disgusted, anxious, or joyous?  I at one time considered beginning the book with the topic of emotion, but decided that I would expend too much energy explaining why I had written a book on emotion to some of my colleagues in the Engineering School. But believe it, the emotional response to a product is a major component of quality.

 Diane Ackerman’s book uses written descriptions of experiences to explain the senses, as do many good writers explain emotions.  One of my favorite books, which indirectly treats emotion, is Making Comics, by Scott McCloud (Harper Collins, 2006, New York, NY).  The author draws and writes comics and books, and is an expert on comics,  According to the back cover, Sin City creator Frank Miller called him "just about the smartest guy in comics". The book utilizes a comic-book  approach to explaining them.  In the process, the reader necessarily receives an insight to how emotions are dealt with in comics.  The book will also make you better understand graphic novels and wonder why you never followed your early instinct to draw and write comics. More details can be seen by clicking on the cover icon on the right.