James L Adams—People and Products

New Venture

I seem to have written posts for this blog for over 5 years (over 300 of them). I began the blog to discuss product quality, since it is as topic that has always interested me, and after a heroic and successful effort in the U.S. to improve manufacturing quality (which of course reflects on overall product quality), industry drifted off into other traditional directions (profit, grow-the-organization, etc.). As I mentioned in my last post, the manufacturing quality goals were nicely described in a classic paper written by David Garvin and published by the Harvard Business review in 1987, when quality was the hot word.

In 2012 I wrote my book Good Products, Bad Products, published by McGraw Hill, to pay more attention to such critical “dimensions” of quality that even though difficult to deal with quantitatively, are very important to human users. It is also mentioned in my last post, and discussed at more length earlier in the blog.

 I wrote my book partly as a text that I used to teach a course in the Stanford Engineering school (Good Products, Bad Products), that was taken over by Professor Dave Beach when I retired, who did a wonderful job with it until last year, when the course too was retired. The book suffered from lack of publicity, and perhaps a decreased interest in product quality in the U.S. Surprisingly (or not), although the book’s sales in the U.S. have been disappointing, it is doing much better in India, China, South Korea, and Japan —countries that perhaps are presently more sensitive to the value of quality in products. After all, it was Japan that awakened us in the 1970’s and 80’s. China, India, and South Korea are coming up fast.

But over the years, I also wrote posts on subjects I was also thinking about which ranged from the fit between the directions of technology and people, the joy of working with the hands, engineering, management, and so on.

I never sought wide distribution of these posts, as I wrote them to force myself to think more deeply about my areas of interest, and I did not want to become involved in a full-fledged conversation with large numbers of people, although the responses to my posts were thoughtful and flattering. But now I have been talked into a project that sounds difficult, but worth doing, by Tim Keely, a friend of mine who is an IT person of amazing talent at Stanford. The project is for me to go through these posts, pick the ones I think are the best, organize them, edit them, and allow him to make an e-book (or several) from them. I am going to try.

This will make my posts even fewer in number and perhaps more wandering in nature as I come up with new thoughts for the book(s), but I am looking forward to the attempt and hope you will bear with me. I will continue to write posts when I need more material for this project, or when I can’t bear not to —like commenting on ridiculous wastes of technology and money such as Trump’s proposed wall on the Mexican border, which hopefully will never happen, but should it, will set an all time record for lack of overall product quality.

So wish me luck. I’ll post progress reports as I go.

Free Trade and Product Quality

Much is being made about such things as free trade and protection due to the upcoming election. Most of the discussion is about money and jobs, but very little is being said about product quality, a very important, and often overlooked variable that is extremely important to business and influenced by overseas interactions. As an example, some time ago India decided to build its industry through tariffs and other methods of protection to encourage its citizens to buy goods made in India. But of course, the quality of many of its industrial products slipped with respect to those made in other countries. When they finally realized this, they began tearing down such protective measures and more actively competing globally. They are in the midst of this process, and it is not an easy one. Such companies as Mahindra, a large manufacturer of tractors, and Tata, a large manufacturer of almost everything, are finally being recognized globally. And the quality of their products is improving, as it must if they are to do a better job of competing globally.

It is strange that those that are pushing for “protection” do not seem to think about product quality and how it is encouraged by free global competition, especially since those doing so (Trump) have an example right in their own back yard —the automobile business. Were it not for the Japanese, the Europeans, and now the Koreans, we might all be driving cars closer to 1970’s Pontiacs. They certainly would be more expensive, were it not for what is sometimes called the “Toyota Production System”. The U.S. automobile business had gotten trapped by complacency (U.S. cars are obviously the best, since they are designed and built by U.S. people in U.S. factories, U.S. citizens don’t like small cars, the big V-8 is the best of all engines, etc). It took foreign competition to wake it up and show it some new tricks.

But politicians are more comfortable dealing with complex situations that they can offer simplistic solutions to (medical care, taxes, immigration) than things like product quality, that encompass emotional and cultural factors as well as functional and economic. For the sake of our future, and our economy, we had better stay more in touch with what is going on in the world, rather than less, and one good way to do that is to compete through free trade. And as another argument, that is the future. U. S. business is not going to give up foreign markets, less costly labor, material, and services, and learning from the accomplishments of their overseas competitors. Nor are we consumers going to accept paying more for lower quality products.

Stanford Good Products, Bad Products course, ME314, 2014

Winter quarter is almost done, but it does not seem like winter here in California, because the sun continues to shine, and the farmers (including my older son) continue to become depressed.  Perhaps it will never rain again and we will return to desert, where we began before building our immense snow-dependent water system.

 The course good Products Bad Products is also almost done.  The Course outline for this year is here.  But since I discussed the course in previous posts, I won’t go into detail again. If you go to the Categories section on the left of the blog below the Recommended books section, and click on "ME 314 Stanford course 2013, you will get some of it. But the web-site for the students “choose a good product and a bad one” assignments is no longer accessible from outside Stanford. Ashish Goel, who was one of the highly competent Teaching Assistants last year, and was in charge of all things having to do with the internet, was kind enough to put it back on an publicly accessible web site.  The URL is here. If you would like to look at some of the student choices and short discussions, open the URL and have a good time.  If you click on the title of the entries, photographs will appear as well as the complete short description by the student choosing the the products as an example of good or bad.                                      

 The course ends with amazingly well designed media-rich presentations of good products and bad ones based on each of the chapter areas of my books. Stanford students are good at media, and Dave Beach pushes it in the course, as you can see from the outline.

I wrote the book because the issue of product quality is extremely complex, subject to personal tastes and judgements, and in general difficult to define in a sound byte.  But by spending effort judging products and arguing about them, it is possible to become much more sophisticated when dealing with the topic. Try it.

 

Marketing, Design, and Product Quality

 The Stanford Good Products Bad Products course is now underway, and the first session was spent with Dave Beach getting the course organized, me talking about my Good Products Bad Products book (the text), and then Dave doing an exercise comparing a common $20.00 orange juice maker with the Juicy Salif juicer designed by Phllipe Starck and selling for more like $100.00 (shown in the photograph). He began by holding up a Juicy Salif and asking the class what it was, (few people knew) and then put it on the table with the disassembled conventional oneand had a student volunteer use each juicer and comment while another made a video of them.  He then let the exercise develop into a guided class discussion of the relative advantages and disadvantages of the two as far as overall quality was concerned, and the power of video as a basis for product analysis.

 The second session featured Pam Scott, whose field is qualitative marketing.  She began in design, but has had a very successful career with several large companies in marketing and has now started her own entitled The Curious Company.  She was accompanied by two members of IDEO.org, a non-profit design and innovation company whose mission is to help the poor through “human-centered” design.

 The goal of qualitative marketing is to develop as much empathy with potential customers as is feasible, by not only interviewing them and watching them, but sharing their lives to the point where one can develop unique insights into their needs and goals. The three speakers obviously love this work, and used cases to illustrate how the method works. 

  Pam used a case of helping a cosmetics company re-design their shower products for women by finding through long conversations and interviews that women take three types of showers—a wake-up-get-it-together and-get-going one (morning?), a feel-good, feminine, and irresistible one  (when they need it), and a wash-away-the-day’s-cares one (perhaps in the evening). The company had been assuming that women would use the same products for all showers. She proved they would be far more successful by diversifying them, in particular aiming toward these three types.  It worked.

  The two IDEO people also gave examples of their work, one relating how he came to understand indian small-plot farmers without speaking a common language by simply spending time helping them in their work and participating in their yoga exercises. The other talked about defining products for very young, and perhaps single, village mothers, by essentially helping them and becoming their buddy. 

 Over my lifetime, marketing has become much more sophisticated, wide-spread, and considered an input to design. As you know, there are powerful quantitative approaches to marketing research as well as qualitative ones.  The jargon “human-centered design” implies that the designer can obtain insight into the “human”, and therefore can deliver the customer more exactly what they need/want.  Qualitative marketing people and designers both seek this insight.

 But how well do people know what they need/want?  I first became interested in design by meeting Henry Dreyfuss while I was in college.  He was one of the big three industrial designers in U.S. (the others were Raymond Loewy and Walter Teague) and I met him because I was dating his daughter. His office specialized in the physical and sensory fit between user and product, and sought for “classic” designs, that would serve the customer over many years.  He succeeded on both of these aims (see Wikipedia article here), and in fact a telephone he designed for Western Electric dominated the U.S. from 1937 until 1950.  In these days of constant turnover, can you imagine essentially everyone in the country having the same, simple, black telephone for 13 years?  No internet access, but certainly an easy way to talk to people.

  His designs were not gaudy nor did they follow fashion and fads.  The photograph at the right shows a late 1930’s tractor that I own that Dreyfuss designed for John Deere.  It is their model A, and the first “styled” one, although it is not styled that much.    It is extremely functional – easy to take apart and put back together and all parts are very accessible.  But it is less likely to attract broken branches, mud, and clots of grease than its predecessor, and has a comfortable seat and great vision.  This was not to say he was completely driven by function.  He found at one point that farmers, who then maintained their own tractors, liked large nuts and bolts, so he convinced the company to increase the size of the fasteners in the face of major complaining from the engineers, who had worked hard to choose them by the load they would carry. 

 Dreyfuss certainly believed in involving  himself and his designers in the use of products.  When I first met him, I noticed he was wearing a hearing aid, and spoke more loudly to him, as I tend to do in such cases. But at one point he gently told me that I did not need to speak so loud because he could hear fine, but was developing the hearing aid for one of his clients, and wearing it long periods of time to see if it hurt his ears.  He also had a great deal of influence in the UCLA Departments of Human Engineering and Art (which is maybe why the art department admitted me without a portfolio), and attracted a large amount of attention by driving a John Deere road grader from his office in Pasadena to the UCLA campus (probably 20 miles through the center of Los Angeles) wearing his trade-mark brown suit.

  But he believed that after thoroughly understanding the problem and the prospective customers,  the designer, being an experienced professional, should extrapolate the customer’s needs and wants  at the time into the future.  He believed that if a product were to be used over a long period of time, it should be designed so that the customer would grow to value it more and more, even if it was not appreciated as much when acquired.  In other words, he believed that good designers should go beyond what the customer had experienced and could imagine— in other words help the customer grow.  This would require designers and qualitative marketing people to help the customer see a bit into the future.  

 

Stanford Good Products Bad Product Course, ME314, 2014

Sorry to be a day late on this post, but the winter quarter begins today at Stanford, and with it the winter course "Good Products Bad Products" which uses my book of the same title (pictured in the banner of this blog, published by McGraw Hill). I was hoping to send you some specific information on the course, but the first meeting is tomorrow, so of course the material is not ready todoy.  If you look in the category list (left side of this blog under recommended books) and click on "ME314 Stanford Course 2013"  You will find some posts I wrote during the quarter last year that give you some details on the course (begin at the bottom).  This year's course will be similar, but speakers and assignments will change—and, of course, the students.

I began this course many years ago to fill a void that I believed existed in  engineering and business education and practise.  During the priod 1970 to 1990 there was a great amount of attention paid to what was then called manufacturing quality.  This was due to products and industries of previously dominant countries being overtaken by those of a few countries who were focussing on doing things better  (Japan for instance) in areas such as reliability, quality of fits and finishes, general approach to manufacturing and management of same, and  cleverness at such things as minimizing rejects and inventory control.The resulting reaction resulted in improvements in everythinig from quality of the products to corporate profit.

The topics considered were measurable and progress could be directly charted and rewarded.  But there are many aspects of product quality that are not measurable, and very important in the overall quality of the product.  The course and my book focus on these.

When I became an Emeritus Professor (retired), the course was taken over by Professor David Beach, the developer and director of the Product Realization Laboratory, an extremely successful program in the engineering school that focuses on integrated design and manufacturing.  The course continues to improve.  I wrote the book a couple of years ago to provide a text, and David has redesigned the course to include more outside speakers, a greater emphasis  emphasis on the quality of student presentations, and more pertinent assignments.  I will include the course outline and more details in my next  post, but as a measure of the course quality and reputation, over 200 students wanted into the course, which unfortunately is limited by room size, the ability to get to know the students individually, and promoting  meaningful presentations and discussions, to 60 students. In addition some 30 people who are working on graduate degrees, but also working in industry, take the course by means of the internet (it is an internet course, but definitely not a MOOC course).

If you have been reading my posts,  you know that I care deeply about these issues, and I will continue to write about them and report on them in the context of the course as we go through the quarter. I am presently searching for people who have similar concerns about the overall product quality of industrially produced products.   If you are one, contact me at [email protected]  If you know other people who are, tell them about this blog and give them the message to contact me.

Higher product quality wins for everyone, and no matter how high the quality of a product, it could be even higher if we paid more attention to it, especially certain aspects of quality that are difficult to quantify . 

 

 

Noise, People, and Good Products

I have recently noticed an uptick in media concern with noise.  An article enabled “The sound of Silence” in the last issue of the Economist is an indication. It is here.

 It is about time.  I read a prediction recently that due to expanding population and economic trends by 2050 6.5 billion people will be living in cities.  That was approximately the entire world’s population in 2005.  People make noise, and if you pack them together (New York City) you have a lot of it, especially with the injection of police, fire, rescue, and commercial and amateur observation drones that are being projected—undoubtedly they will be propelled by two cycle engines and try to fly low so that the advertising banners they are towing are more easily readable.  I realize I should have emphasized noise more in my Good Products, Bad Products book. 

 The Stanford campus where I live is a good example, as well as the campus itself.  It used to be called "the farm".  It should now be called "the city".  It is in an extended growth and building period, and in addition the local area is doing a large amount of road work, including installing a  large new gas main to replace the one which caused an explosion and a fire in a town north of us.  One of the wonderful features of my home at one time was the quiet. No more. 

 We seem to be in the traffic patterns for both San Francisco and San Jose’s airports, We seem to be the only homeowners that do our own gardening (a hobby of my wife), so we are surrounded by professional mow and blow teams that often use multiple two-cycle engines at the same time.  In At 100 yards on one side of us is an increasingly busy campus road lined with fraternities that are the scene of parties featuring bands with ever more powerful amplifiers, and 100 yards on the other side is an increasingly busy road that has been the sight of gas main work for at least a year.  Even as I write this an even larger and louder garbage truck has stopped outside our house and our neighbor’s mow and blow team and contractor are at work.

 Will there be an end to what is sometimes called the noise pollution?  There will certainly be more regulations.  Past ones have caused vehicles to be quieter and rock bands to have decibel limits (difficult to police).  The university gardeners now use quieter equipment, such as four cycle generators to power electrical yard machines.  A few companies are now advertising the relative lack of noise from their products.

 And maybe the construction in the Stanford area will slow down some time—or maybe we are like an airport and are doomed to constant “improvements” accomplished by heavy equipment.

 My experience is that producers and consumers of products worry more about appearance and function than sound.  Maybe the time has come when populations have increased to the point where more attention needs to be placed on sound. Actually, this has been slowly happening for years.  When I was in high school we could drive our cars around with hardly any muffler (if you are old enough, you remember” straight pipes”.)  No longer.  When I was in high school the population of my home town (not my high school town) was 1200.  Now it is over 100,000.  That would be a lot of barely muffled cars. 

But as population grows, so does noise,  Cars seem to have dealt with being quieter.  In fact in The Economist article the author admits that maybe electric cars need to make a bit more noise.  Motorcycles lived through the requirement of being muffled.  At least heavy equipment is used to raze buildings and dig up pavement rather than explosives. But how about private planes and small internal combustion engines.  And how about more extreme punishment for people who use their automobile horns to express anger, rather than give warnings. 

 And I think that one contributor to the increasing noise problem is the present fad of “open office” architecture.  More about that in my next post.  But to get you thinking, Facebook is about to build a ten-acre open office for 2800 engineers (see Forbes article here)  Not for engineers like me!   

Product Quality, Marketing/Sales, and Life—A Minor Diatribe

When I arrived at Stanford, eagerly trying to understand such things as creativity/innovation and business, I cooperated in a number of workshops with a wonderful marketing professor in the business school named Bob Davis.  He was a very entertaining guy and devoted to defining marketing as not only different than sales, but a higher calling.  This is an activity that is common in graduate schools of business, even though it is a difficult line to draw.  This was before the days of digital communications, big data, esoteric analytical techniques, and involvement of top level statisticians and psychologists.  I was fascinated by the field of marketing, which seemed to be striving to better match products and people. 

 Now I am appreciably older, comfortably well off, seemingly equipped with everything I want, and amazingly annoyed by the inescapable presence of marketing/sales. Granted that I am not a typical consumer, but I am finding it insulting to have postcards trying to get me to subscribe to magazines drop out of magazines I already subscribe to, seemingly every store I enter trying to get me to join their “club”, endless attempts to get me to fill out surveys so that they have more information on me, and a world blanketed with advertisements everywhere I look and awash in commercials in all media I enter.

 I know what I want/need, and resent people trying to add to the list or alter my choices.  Do they think they know more about me than I do?  I find the self-marketing attitude of many internet addicts somewhat obnoxious (even though I admit I was talked into social networking by my publisher, who told me that otherwise no one would notice my Good Products Bad Products book).  I wonder at my wife’s daily ritual of rapidly going through our surface mail while standing over the re-cycling barrel, trying to avoid throwing something important away with the overwhelming majority of marketing-oriented junk.

 Is there no end to this?  I realize that we  humans seem to love “deals”, and that it is possible to show that this marketing “works”.   The recent trauma that J.C. Penney went through in seeking to move from hundreds of sales per year to constant lower prices (which I thought made great sense) resulted in a huge backlash and the resignation of its president after only eight months in office.  So I was wrong. Of course an organization called One Million Moms turned against the company for using Ellen De Generes  as a spokesperson.  Not being one of the Million Moms, I can’t claim any insight on that one.

 And of course, look at our ability to create “celebrities”, political campaigns, and national propaganda.

 But how much does this constantly increasingly sophisticated and wide-spread marketing/sales actually benefit us and the economy?  It definitely makes jobs, but is the noise it creates perhaps greater than the good it accomplishes? 

 I find myself avoiding products and being against people whose marketing interferes with the quality of my life, whether through producing billboards that mar beautiful country or attractive buildings, commercials that interrupt things I am interested in, messages repeated so constantly that I assume someone thinks I am so stupid I don’t understand them, junk mail, internet ads, phone calls that are unerringly synchronized with my meals, questionnaires, coupons, clubs, and other tools intended to influence me in ways the producers of goods and services think are positive.

 I want good stuff, and can’t clearly see the correlation between the quality of the marketing effort and the quality of the product or person being marketed.  I wish we would just produce outstanding choices and let me choose!   

Product Quality and The Soul of Old Machines

I have just completed rescuing and restoring an old drag saw, which was the predecessor of the chain saw and used for logging felled trees.  A photograph is below, with my chain saw under it  for scale.  The drag saw does not cut nearly as well as my chain saw, but for those fond of old machinery, it has obvious advantages.  The next photo gives one a chance to compare the mechanical drive for the two.  How will I ever be satisfied with my chain saw again?

The functioning of the parts of the drag saw is obvious, and watching it in action is a
meditative (although a bit loud) experience.  It takes one back in time to a more colorful period of logging.  And having taken it apart, tended to its unwell parts, and reassembled and painted it, I have a detailed knowledge of exactly how it works, have gained a number of hours of therapy through working with my hands, have added to the beauty of our yard, and saved the saw for future generations.

 I do not have a “before” photo of this project, but I will attach three photos to show you a similar project—the resurrection of a Gravely garden tractor.  How can one start with the rusty, although it turned out surprisingly complete, pile of junk shown in the first photo and produce the beautiful functioning machine shown in the second and third without feeling happy?  And wonders of wonders, old machines in the “before” condition shown cost nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

I am not alone.  This is a compelling hobby, and an excellent escape from the internet.

Product Quality, Computers, and the Internet

I am still working on the Trillions book by Lucas, Ballay, and McManus that I mentioned in my last blog.  The major message in the book is that as computer capability and information on the internet continue to increase (which they will) we will hit a wall with our present approach to information and the internet; that our use of server-client channels, company owned seperate “clouds”, differentiated hardware and software, and retention of old and once adequate formats will result in death through complexity and frustration on the part of users. Not being a computer person, I am going to discuss this book with a couple of friends who are, before I comment on such larger issues.

 However, I must admit I resonate with many smaller examples of increasing problems in the book.  I am finding it takes more time to find what I want on the internet because of the increasing number of locations my search engine finds for me, and more and more redundancy and unsubstantiated opinion on the internet in general. I just looked up bed bugs on Google, and of course received 3,400,000 pertinent pages in 0.25 seconds.  But most of the pages I looked at (many fewer than 3,400,000) said the same thing (they don’t carry germs, they feed at night, they are flat, etc.) and suggested the same cure (tear up your bedroom, look for black bug poop, vacuum, etc.).  A few were more valuable than the others.  I would have liked to just be guided to the few.  Same results if you look up anything having to do with medicine.  Ten pages would be enough and easier to deal with in most of these searches. But more and more appear, since there is no barrier to putting them up.

 One of my favorite escape-book authors is a very prolific Pulitzer Prize winning journalist named John Camp, who writes under the pen-name John Sandford.  In  one of his latest books, Silken Prey, he features a couple of satisfyingly edgy computer experts.  The hero, a detective named Lucas Davenport, also has a computer background.  At one point Davenport, while trying to research some suspects, states “I really need to get background on them.  But all I get from Google is a lot of shit”.  One of his experts, a woman who goes by the name of ICE, replies “You know that old thing about “Garbage in, garbage out?”  “Yeah” says Lucas. " "Google is now the biggest pile of garbage ever assembled on earth”, ICE says.  “Give it a couple of more years, and you won’t be able to find anything in it”.

 When feelings are common enough to make it into a John Sandford book, they are common indeed.

 As to software,  some time ago I replaced a dead Mac, and the new one came with a OS 7 level operating system, which did not like my Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft office suite, resisted showing me the scan bar, and refused to offer up the two little arrows on the right of the page which let one move incrementally through a document or photograph.  It also offered me new “features” which I found unnecessary and complicated.  I went back to OS 6.8, which although perhaps not as “advanced”, was one with which I was totally familiar, more than adequate, liked the applications I was used to, and did not require that I acquire new habits and skills. I was reminded of the days in which Dell would for an extra $150 sell a PC with Windows XP, which Microsoft had announced they would no longer service, rather than one containing the newer Windows Vista.  They had lots of buyers.  I am still using my Mac OS 6.8 and happy with it, but soon something will make it inconvenient for me to do so, and I will be spending time learning how to do things I once knew how to do in a different way and cursing because I can't disable features I don't want.

An example of progress in product quality

A few years ago I bought the remote battery operated irrigation timer shown in the first photo. The control screen was visible through the plastic shield for a few months, but then the shield clouded over and it became necessary to remove it to change the control settings.  It worked well, but as can be seen from the second photo below (minus the shield), the numbers were miniscule and usually difficult to see because of faucet location, and in order to set it, it was necessary to go through the modes shown in the even smaller text at the top of the screen and press the necessary buttons.  This was not straight forward unless one had the small manual at hand, and not only does one lose manuals and not want to spend the time to try to find them on the internet, but really, a single-channel irrigation timer should not require a manual.

 The other day I bought another one made by the same manufacturer (Orbit) and found an amazing improvement, as can be seen in the third photo.  All of a sudden the settings are visible to the normal human, and the functions are obvious, as are the settings.  I am presently reading a book entitled Trillions; thriving in the Emerging Information Ecology, by Peter Lucas, Joe Ballay, and Mickey McManus, respectively  professor of Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon, former head of the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon, and president and CEO of MAYA Design, a consulting firm specializing in digital networks and communication. They believe that we are in an early phase of digital communication and heading in the wrong direction—one that will drown us in complexity.  Among other strong feelings is that computers and associated networks must speak our language—we have already gone too far in accommodating to them.

 The timer in the third photo speaks our language.  That in the first does not.  Good for Orbit. 

 I will talk a bit about design of the cyber world in future posts.  I will begin by talking a bit about the Trillions book.  I tend to resonate with its arguments, having been influenced by people who have also influenced the authors (Henry Dreyfuss, an early mentor).  In the last few weeks I have gone through the usual projector and sound system problems in various new and technically sophisticated buildings on campus, spent a ridiculous amount of time integrating a new blu-ray player into my excellent (but pre-hdmi) home system, unjamming my fairly new printer, attempting to re-do my unworkable user name and password collection, and trying to figure out how to live with the increasing quantity and decreasing quality of the knowledge on the internet. I have a life to live and I don’t need this kind of stuff.  It’s time for the digital world to get over itself and start growing up.

More Changes in Creativity/Innovation in the last 50 years

In my last post I mentioned the recent talk I gave concerning changes in  creativity/innovation  over the last 50 years.  In particular I talked a bit about the increasing knowledge about brain chemistry and brain activity that shed light on the process .  But I discussed several other factors that have changed the nature of creativity and innovation in my talk, and I mention them here.

 Improved knowledge of creativity and innovation in groups and organizations — a great deal of research and writing has been done in this area partly spurred by the success of the Japanese in the 1970’s, and 80’s and partly by increased specialization requiring more emphasis on team work.

 Recognition of the cyclical nature of interest in creativity and innovation as a function of the economy (it rises when the economy is down), national goals (go to the moon), and breakthroughs in science and technology (digital electronics and genetic engineering)—It is so high now it resembles a management fad.  What will the future look like?

 The computer/internet explosion— An obvious aid in access to information, solving problems, communicating, providing new tools (CAD/CAM), and a source of new business opportunities.  But it is a work in progress, demands much time and energy, and may seduce people away from complex ventures and the type of  innovation involved in major projects—upgrading the infrastructure in the U.S. is a larger and more important venture and requires much more investment and effort than that required to come up with an internet startup that can make a few people some money.

 Globalization—A positive factor.  Provides increased competition and markets, demolishes stereotypes, results in more attention paid to intellectual property, and requires more knowledge of other cultures.

 Increasing population — approaches to solving problems that used to work  (automobiles in cities —disposable items) become less effective  and desirable as population increases and resources become more scarce, requiring increased and larger scale creativity/innovation and recognition of the increasing role of politics in the process.

 Dawning realization that ever increasing pressure for short term profits and fast growth can be detrimental to creativity and innovation, and in particular to product quality.

Creativity, the Mind, and the Brain

David Brooks, one of my favorite columnists in the New York Times, wrote a column in the June 18^th edition concerning the present tendency to use neuroscience to explain the human condition. It was entitled "Beyond the Brain", and emphasized that the brain is not the same as the mind.  The two words do have different meanings to most people, in that “brain” usually  implies the 3 pounds or so of rather ugly meat inside our skull, and “mind” our more difficult to understand consciousness, cognitive output, and feelings. But we will continue to study the brain and its processes because we are curious and because new tools make it possible to learn more and more about it.  And I think we all agree that the brain is necessary for the mind.  But there are people (sometimes I am one) who believe that it may take something more powerful than human brains to totally understand the human mind, and computers are not it.

 

But I thought of this question last week, as  I was asked to give a talk on the past 50 years of creativity to the  50^th anniversary party of the Product Design program at Stanford University.  I had been a part of this program from its beginning until my retirement and had been quite involved in reading, teaching, consulting about and working on problems involving creativity, so I found this an interesting assignment. 

 

One major change has occurred in the nature-nurture debate, which can sometimes bring up the brain-mind topic.  Fifty years ago, we (or at least those of us around universities) were taught to view people as being formed primarily by nurture – their upbringing, their culture, their friends, and perhaps their schooling.  Certainly people did not totally accept this, but it was politically correct to espouse it.  Since that time, due to research in the social sciences and our preoccupation with genetics, this view has shifted.  I have never seen a figure as to how much, but I would say that we give two thirds credit to what we have learned, and one third to our genes (brain), and the genetics argument continues to charge ahead.

 An example of such thinking is a nicely written book written by Peter Whybrow in 2005 entitled American Mania: When More is Not Enough (W. W. Norton, NY—click on icon at the right for more information).  At the time he was director of the Semel Institute for NeuroScience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the Judson Braun Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine.  In his book Professor Whybrow discusses the reasons that so many of us U.S. citizens seem to drive ourselves to acquire more than we need, whether it be money, possessions, food, or whatever, at the expense of time and energy that we could use to better improve our satisfaction with our lives , and the welfare of our families and communities. 

 

Whybrow  argues partly from an evolutionary standpoint—through most of our evolution we have lived in scarcity, and have developed strong signals to inform us when our needs (food?) are not being met, but weaker signals when we have enough (the cause of obesity?).  He also argues as a psychiatrist (“mania; a dysfunctional state of mind that begins with a joyous sense of excitement and high productivity, but escalates into reckless pursuit, irritability, and confusion, before cycling down into depression” —sound familiar?) and finally as a neuroscientist, explaining the purposes and functions of various parts and processes of the mind, and how they can cause us to lose the balance of our lives.  He believes that genetics is a strong influence on this, and uses immigrants as a class of people that obviously pursue risk and uncertainty, and whose descendants do likewise.

 

It is a good read, and will get you thinking.  And it speaks to both mind and brain.

 

 

 

War and the Products of Industry

The last few posts I have written have been on this topic. I veered in this direction because I do not think that people think hard enough about the tremendous impact that Defense Department activities have on not only products for the military, but on civilian products and the overall economy. 

 But considering the military side, it seems to me that an interesting thing has happened, in that the availability of consistent and high funding over many years has resulted in technology and resulting products that have invalidated the classic western Clauswitz theory of total war —massive armies and navies slugging it out as in World War II.  So-called weapons of mass destruction (nuclear bombs, bio-chemical weapons) have made the potential cost in property and lives of civilian as well as members of the military ridiculously high on both sides of any conflict in which they are used.  It is possible to make treaties banning their use in conflicts between nations, but there is always a risk of desperate usage by dictatorial governments or fanatics under attack.

 Wars (or “police actions”) in which the U.S. has been involved since World War II have remained limited, and have not result in the hoped for “victories”.  And they have often veered toward more eastern theory of wars (read Sun Tsu), which recognize the effectiveness of such things as surprise (Pearl Harbor), ambush,  deception, patience (Mao and Ho Chi Minh}, and avoiding un-winnable battles.  And the nature of battle itself has been drastically changed by the use of air, modern transportation and communication, night vision capability, improved personal arms and armor, observation satellites, computers, and the global positioning satellite system.

 And in the U.S., at least, there is a growing antipathy toward what is euphemistically called collateral damage, as well as military casualties, and it is about time, since the civilian casualty count in modern wars is often larger than that of the military, and the civilians are in a sense innocent by-standers.  The present uproar about drone attacks, in which relatively few people are killed is a symptom of this antipathy.  Though the casualties are relatively few, they seem to violate our sense of fairness.  They are the opposite of Gary Cooper and the one-on-one duel in the classic movie High Noon.

 I certainly do not claim to know the answer to this.  The Cold War period was a period of relative peace, but high anxiety.  I understand the desire of nations to possess nuclear weapons, since for better or worse, they definitely help in becoming recognized as a power to be reckoned with (North Korea?).  The League of Nations failed, and the U.N. and the world court seem to have only limited power.  And leaders of nations, even though they deny it, seem to like to fight. Do we need a new type of war?   Now there is an opportunity for creativity.    

Good Products? Bad Products? The Gun, Explosives, and War

Along about the year 900, the Chinese invented gunpowder.  It is a fairly simple substance, consisting of 65 to 75 percent potassium nitrate (saltpeter), 15-20 percent charcoal, and 10 to 15 percent sulfur – common materials, but interesting that someone would think of combining them.  The result burns fiercely, and if confined, explodes.  It was initially used for fireworks.  But eventually changed war, and the world.

 A hundred years later the Chinese were using gunpowder to propel spears and various materials from a tube.  A gun perhaps.  By the 14^th century, the Chinese were making so-called hand cannons, and the secrets had followed the silk road to Europe.  The Ottomans were providing their infantry with crude, single-shot muzzle loaded guns by the year 1500.  Guns were heavy in those days, but ships were less concerned with weight, so cannons had taken their place in naval warfare.  And of course, since then guns have continued to decrease in weight and increase in power and speed of firing, until now we have operational multi - barrel machine guns capable of 6,000 to 10,000 rounds per minute. 

 And chemical power in other forms has led to such things as increasingly powerful explosives, supersonic aircraft, and indirectly, intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying nuclear “warheads”. (I put the word in quotes, because there is a strong school of thought that such things should actually be called nuclear bargaining chips, since if anyone uses them, they will be permanently ostracized).

 Over time, advances in technology have made weapons both increasingly powerful and more rapidly and easily deliverable, and at the same time militaries have grown greatly. At the height of Napolean’s Grande Armie (the first great “citizen’s army”) in 1812, it contained some 600,000 soldiers.  In the U.S. Civil war, over two million people served in the Union army alone.  And both sides were plentifully equipped with cannons, rifles, and side arms.  The result, as you nay know, was 620,000 deaths which represents the highest death toll of U.S. citizens of any wars in which the U.S. has been involved to date.

 And the nature of battle  has changed. War has gone from the close combat necessary when weapons were limited in range by people and animal power, to massed firepower of muskets and volley fire, to the stable slaughter of World War I trenches and machine guns, to the wider open tank and airplane battle in Europe in World War II, to the present “irregular” wars going on in the world right now.  These wars, strangely enough, have certain resemblances to the U.S. Revolutionary War, except that in that war the U.S. were the irregulars, and the British the regulars.

 World War II, sometimes thought to be an extension of World War I, very much raised the bar in what is now called collateral damage, and in the importance of industrial production.  Wikipedia states estimates of civilians killed ranging from 38 to 55 million, and military dead from 22 to 25 million, and it is generally agreed that the allied win was based heavily on the ability to produce the weapons and other material necessary to conduct the war.  An interesting book is Eagles of Mitsubishi: The Story of the Zero Fighter, by Jiro Horikoshi, the chief designer of the aircraft (University of Washington Press, I think now out of print, but available on the used book market.)  It tells the tale of the Zero, originally undoubtedly the outstanding fighter in the world, but eventually doomed because of the production of large numbers of increasingly high-performing fighters by the U.S., while Japan was limited in industrial capability to compete (The U.S. produced 300,000 airplanes during the four years of World War II).

 But since World War II, wars have been more limited and localized, and the winner (if  any) more difficult to determine.  It could be that our technology has advanced to the point where total war, at least as defined by Clauswitz doesn’t work anymore.  Perhaps through historically heavily supporting the development of technology, the military has helped unlimited make war too potentially costly and all-encompassing to be used to solve international (or any other) disputes.  More about this next post and then we will leave the subject of war.

 As to whether weapons and other materials of war are good products or bad products, it obviously depends on whether the judgement is to be made by the deer or the hunter; the military sniper or the civilian pacifist;  the Lockheed program manager or the Buddhist Priest;  The question of the quality of a particular assault rifle is necessarily impacted by whether the person answering the question is strongly for or against the right of civilians to own them.

 But since we in the U.S. are spending such an incredible amount of time and money on weapons and wars, we should at least be thinking more about what quality means when applied to products of industry used by the military—and what their availability to civilians and other countries should be.  We are, after all, the world's leading exporter of arms.

Product Quality and Pre-gun War

Before the gun, technology was a major factor in increasing the deadliness and cost of war. Taking Europe as an example, the use of horses and chariots added greatly to the speed and violence of battle beginning in the early (3^rd millennium B.C.E.) days. Chariots were extremely sophisticated for their time—wooden vehicles weighing on the order of 75 pounds that allowed high speed and were capable of travel over rough ground.  Composite bows were another early development.  They were formed of a number of pieces of laminated wood steamed into a curve opposite to that it would assume when strung (re-curve). Strips of horn were then glued to the side that would eventually be in compression. and tendons were glued to the side that would be in tension when strung.  The bow was then left to cure for up to a year.  When finally strung, the force required to draw the bow ranged up to 150 pounds (compared to a tenth if that with primitive simple bows) and it could be made short enough to be used on horseback or from chariots.

 Along with improved offensive weapons, fortifications developed (large ones such as the Great Wall of China and the Walls of Jericho and many small ones).  But armies still primarily fought on foot on open ground. As an example, The Greek heavy infantrymen (Hoplites) sometimes fought in a  large formation called a phalanx, typically consisting of 16 rows of 16 men, and were equipped with sword, spear, and some 70 pounds of bronze armor including a large shield, helmet, and upper body and lower leg armor. Throwing spears were 7 to 10 feet long, but in formation, spears could reach 20 feet (the sarissa),and the formation could become fierce indeed, charging along with the front rows of spears being held horizontal, and rows toward the back being held vertically and lowered when the front ranks fell (see photo).

 Since the Greeks were a sea-faring people, naval warfare also developed, involving large galleys with bronze rams used to sink and/or board the enemy.  The largest was the trireme, which employed three banks of oars .  Incidentally, the Greeks did not spend most of their time sitting around in white robes discussing philosophy.  They were warlike people, whether fighting in wars between city states, or in wars  against other states.

 The Roman empire added full-time professional service (modern standing armies) and even more brutal hand to hand combat to war.  Many earlier “conquerors”, such as Alexander the Great, ranged through long distances winning their battles, but seemed to be most interested in displaying their power, rather than controlling the territory they claimed.  The Romans definitely governed their empire through their soldiers, whose legions moved their locations from point to point to make sure that their citizens were behaving and protected from Rome’s enemies.  Their soldiers fought with similar body armor to the Greeks, and carried a throwing spear and a traditional spear to use against the enemy during the charge, but their chief weapon was a short sword  which they used on contact.

 From the time that the Romans were overcome by various eastern tribes until the coming of the gun, warfare grew toward the feudal system, in which heads of state would give holdings to lords, who in turn would let the land out to serfs who would farm it for their livelihood.  In return the lord took a portion of their crop and the serfs  were expected to serve in the army of their particular lord, perhaps in service to the king, perhaps to settle a beef with another lord.   This in turn led to armies of a few wealthy and well equipped mounted wealthy fighters (knights), and a large number of soldiers on foot with minimal armor carrying such things as lances and battle axes.  The age of iron and steel had arrived, and as you have seen in museums, the wealth of the knights and heads of state resulted in weapons and armor with extraordinarily controlled and beautiful detailing.

But guns were going to wreck the knights, make war much more costly, and require more and more involvement of industry and mass production. 

Fighting, Primitive War, and Weapons

People (especially men) fight physically for many reasons – different beliefs, status,  basic needs, entertainment, historical disagreements, and so on.  As long as technology is minimal, the damage to the species seems to be tolerable.  In fact, anthropologists have long studied what is often called primitive war, and have even outlined some advantages.

 Primitive war still occurs in isolated tribes, such as the Marings of Papua New Guinea.  Maring wars occur every ten or twelve years (the time it takes pigs to mature and fatten  for sacrifices and feasts) and involve hundreds of people equipped with simple bows and arrows, spears, and clubs.  The intent is to re-establish power and influence and re-allocate resources, women, and sometimes land.  Killing people is not a goal, and in fact, apparently the weapons are less lethal than those used to hunt animals for food, and the wars are often interrupted to work on gardens, or simply rest.  If someone is killed, the war may be halted, and the warriors seldom end up in hand- to -hand fighting. 

 Many primitive wars were more lethal, such as those involving the Maoris and the Aztecs, but were also limited as the Maoris developed fortifications that would withstand attack, and the Aztecs fought to capture people to be sacrificed to their gods, rather than for  spoils.  Such wars did not imperil the existence of  the people fighting them— no weapons of mass destruction.

 But even though our wars are now “modern” and involve nations, many more people, and tremendously sophisticated and destructive weapons that can be used over huge distances, we still fight in more primitive ways. If you are interested in more about this type of fighting, or the history of war in general, read “A History of Warfare”, by John Keegan, a terrific writer and senior lecturer in military history at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, England, described in recommended readings at the right. For more on the Marings, click here.

 A good example of primitive fighting with few weapons and no major casualties were the predictable large inter school fights after football games in my high school, which became so wide spread that my friends started a so-called car club to proclaim our toughness (complete with jackets proclaiming ourselves Sultans of Berdoo) as a defensive mechanism to escape them.  In fact American football might be considered a ceremonial type of warfare.  The photo at the left shows a modern gladiator (www.reddit.com).  Sports often have many elements of ceremonial warfare, and even though they may be highly regulated, the fans are not always so. The photo at the right is a shot of the start of a riot at a Birmingham United soccer match. For more on this topic see Football Hooliganism here.

But in the third millennium B.C.E., “modern” war began with the coming of states such as Egypt and Sumer and took the direction of acquiring, land, wealth, and power.  The same weapons were used as in primitive war (bows and arrows, spears, clubs, axes, knives, swords) but the materials and designs continued to improve.  More people were involved and wars ranged more widely.  About 2340 B.C.E., Sargon become ruler of Mesopotania, and with an army of over 5000 and bronze weapons, conquered an empire roughly the size of present day Iraq. Modern war had arrived , and increasingly sophisticated technology was  to cause casualties to mount.

The Oxy-Acetylene Tank Set—A Good Product

The  photo shows my now classic middle-sized gas welding equipment.  Big enough to cover my needs, but also small enough to lift into the back of my pick-up.  It consists of the usual — Victor torch with cutting head and heating and welding tips, hose, tanks of oxygen and of acetylene, pressure regulators, and assorted related stuff (goggles, torch cleaning tips, spark igniter, cart, etc.) The equipment is sometimes loosely called a tank set.  I recommend that all households have one.

I use it not only for welding, brazing, and soldering, but also for a broad range of usages requiring controlled heat.  I have even occasionally used it to reheat my coffee on cold days when I am working out of doors.

The rusty mechanism on the table next to it on the old wagon is part of a very vintage McCormick Reaper (the one in the  history books) that I am restoring.  It is a crucial part, since it contains the shaft that rotates the arms that sweep the grain into the cutter and then onto the ground, and all sorts of pivoting parts that allow the arms to move up and down as they swing. The reaper is probably 130 years old, and has spent a good bit of that time outside, so when I acquired it the shaft had rusted quite firmly to the castings in which they turn.  I soaked the whole mess first in penetrating oil, then in old diesel oil, and even in used brake fluid, but the parts remained rusted together.  So I used the ultimate answer in such cases, which is to heat the castings red hot with my torch.  Since heat weakens rust and expands holes, the rust gave up with the result that the shaft now rotates happily and the arms go through their motion.  One of many uses for my tank set .

 The tank set qualifies as a very good product according to the criteria in my Good Products Bad Products book.  Costs are low for the capability it gives me, and it has never failed to do what I want it to do.  It is easy to use and fits me well, is nicely made, and fills me with positive emotions, ranging from nostalgia to an instant sense of accomplishment whenever I use it.  It is elegant in its simplicity, and lets me mingle with the welding culture. Environment?  One generally uses a so-called neutral flame (no particulates) with this device, I am stingy in my  use of acetylene, and I don’t use it that often.  It certainly is not in the league of my furnace, water heater, or gas stove.

 Also it is fun to weld.  It never ceases to amaze me how easy to turn two pieces of metal into one with a simple flame. I must admit I generally use electrical equipment to weld these days, since it is fast, more easily controlled, and allows one to avoid oxidation by using an inert gas.  But welding with a gas flame strikes me as a somehow purer experience. It's just me and the fire!

 

 

 

 

Evgeny Morozov "To Save Everything Click Here" book

I mentioned this book in a post a bit ago, and announced that I had ordered it and would report on it.  The book was  deeper and more thought provoking than I expected, so I have just finished it.  I thoroughly agree with the first comment on the back, by Bruce Sterling, which reads “For the brilliant dissident Evgeny Morozov, computers are like broken beach-toys on the dark, historic tides of power  politics.  His new book should be bound in sandpaper and used to abrade the works of other Internet pundits”. Clicking on the appropriate image in the recommended readings to the right will give more information on the book.

 But the book is far from a rant.  Morozov has an interesting viewpoint, since he grew up in Belarus as the Soviet Union was unraveling, and has gone from a born-again believer in the power of the Internet to being a critic.  His understanding of the internet is obvious, as are his hopes that it will better aid the cause of liberal democracy.

 The book is beautifully written and argued, and in my mind overdue. His last book, entitled “The Net Delusion”, concerned the use of the Internet initially as a tool to overthrow dictators and support democracy, but later as a tool by these various dictators to strengthen their grip by such things as enhancing their propaganda ability and identifying and destroying opposition.  This, of course, was an unwelcome message to those who believe that the internet will cause all seven billion of us to understand each other, agree on important issues, and, to borrow a word that is losing its very meaning because of the Internet, be friends.

 In this new book, he first of all takes a swing at what he calls Solutionism — the belief that everything can (and should) be made “better” (often defined by the solutionist).  He singles out engineers as being staunch believers in this, and being one, I think we are guilty.  He does an excellent job of demonstrating that some things. such as politics, have been criticized for as long as recorded history, but they don’t seem to have been replaced by any of the  communication “miracles” or other technological “breakthroughs” of the past.  In fact, he argues in favor of the very human and messy character of much large-scale human interaction, and although he believes that the Internet is an important tool in aiding these interactions, he obviously does not believe in its ability to replace such things.   

 His next argument is against changing our societies to match the present structure and goals of the Internet .  It is, after all, a work in progress, and our activities should not be structured and simplified to fit its present abilities. I very much resonate to his argument.  At one point in my Stanford career I became chair of the then struggling program in Science, Technology, and Society.  I learned, to my surprise and pleasure, that even though I had practiced and taught engineering for 30 years, I knew very little about the history and character of technology, or about the unsuccessful history of movements often described as technocracy.

 One rule of thumb often used by historians of technology is that it takes at least 50 years for a new technology to mature.  I am a believer.  My first brush with computers was about 50 years ago, and it consisted of giving structures problems to a programmer who in turn would feed my problems to a large mainframe, which resulted in an answer after several days.  Look at where we are now.  But yet we are just scratching the surface of how to use them in a way that is more consistent with society. The internet has been under construction for over 50 years, but the World Wide Web, which made the Internet accessible to most of us, dates from 1989. That was only 25 years ago.  Such things as social networking and attempting to combine unbiased information with marketing are in their infancy.  The internet will continue to develop, and must do so in a direction that better serves humans, or it will become a more complex version of network TV. 

 The majority of the book is full of cases, stories, and predictions of problems that have and will result from too much belief in what Morozov calls cyber-utopianism.  I am going to talk more about this book and the internet in my next post, but anyone making use of the Internet, and especially people designing and manufacturing the software and hardware involved in it, should read the book, not rely on me to interpret it.  I found it a very impressive work, whether one agrees with the author or not (many in Silicon Valley will not), and am jealous that I cannot write books like it. 

 

 

 

 

Stanford Good Products Bad Products course final presentations

During the final class meeting, there were four presentations on companies that made products that the students found noteworthy in the context of my book.  One of these was on cultural fit, one on aesthetics, and two on the topic of global fit.

 The product having to do with cultural fit was Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. It was once a very popular U.S. beer, went into decline, and has come back as a counter-cultural beer, being “discovered” by urban hipsters.  It does not do conventional beer promotion, rather having become visible in its counter-culture role through alternate and sometimes outrageous means (such as being included in "South Park").  A good blurb on it is on Wikipedia here.

 The aesthetic topic was Coolbeams spectracles glasses (here), yet another Kickstarter start-up.  I have to give Kickstarter (here) credit for having a major influence on at-least Stanford students. It does seem to fill the gap for many people between reasonably thought-out ideas and market feasibility test.

 One of the the global fit products was Blue Bottle Coffee, a high-end coffee company that stresses dealing directly with the producers and stressing sustainable and organic farming and paying reasonable wages. Again we learned to taste in a different way.  We prepared the coffee provided by the group in the proper way, and tasted it by slurping it from a spoon, apparently a process making one more sensitive to the odor.  Newly sophisticated, I drank my morning coffee at home by slurping it from the cup, acquiring worried looks from my wife—perhaps there is a social factor involved.

 The other had to do with the tremendous (and unsustainable?) use of resources by agriculture, and featured a substitute egg powder for cooking use named Beyond Eggs,  made entirely from chemicals (no chickens).  Apparently 30% of all eggs go into cooking, and as you are undoubtedly aware, there is some controversy about commercial chicken farming. We were given chocolate chip cookies to compare baked by the group with regulare eggs and Beyond Eggs, and the class generally could not tell the difference. Beyond Eggs is due to hit the market about now.

The course ended with an open ended discussion between the instructors and the students.  The instructors were highly pleased with the course, as was I, since my Good Products Bad Products book does its intended job very well.  For the final time, I encourage you, if you have not done so, to check out the individual student "good products bad products" choices here (click on the title to get the complete essay on any one). 

And if you have any questions about this  splendid course contact Professor Dave Beach, ([email protected]).  

Needs, Emotions, Aesthetics, and Electricity

  I’m a bit late on this post because of a power outage during  the late afternoon and evening, which caught me with an uncharged portable and a dead desktop.  But it gave me a chance to think about our increasing dependency upon electricity, and the aging state of much U.S. infrastructure.  As to dependency, I can remember  power outages when I was a kid, and we would ignore them during the daytime, and light a few candles if at night.  But my normally fast moving wife is slowed down due to some recent surgery, and has been entertaining herself watching movies on the TV and working on her computer.  And I, of course, have become computer dependent.  Throw in our major dependency on such things as the microwave, the coffee maker, and other such modern marvels, and without electricity, we are much less impressive animals, and perhaps are less amused sitting around in the dark talking to each other.

 As to infrastructure, our power outages probably have something to do with a large construction project going on close to our house. A couple of years ago there was a gas main explosion in San Bruno, a town fairly close to where we live.  Eight people were killed and a number of homes burned.  As a result Pacific Gas and Electric (our supplier) has been doing a survey of gas pipelines, and guess what, a fairly main street close to our house has been ripped up for several months to replace  a large gas pipeline (looks like 18 inches in diameter or so), which of course is buried close to other utilities. the job is requiring massive amounts of huge equipment and numbers of people.  As I wait to be waved through the often one-way traffic, I cannot help but think about the many other elements of U.S. infrastructure that need upgrading, and the cost of doing so.

 Back to the Stanford Good Products Bad Products course.  The quarter is coming to an end and the student groups continue to report on businesses that produce products that they feel demonstrate the elements of quality in my book.  On March 7, reports were delivered on three products that have high emotional impact and fulfill various needs.  The first was Gatorade (website here), which has evolved over time from being seen as a functional replacement of electrolytes, to being a symbol of heroic accomplishment (often consumed in victorious glee and sometimes thrown on coaches).   The second was Klutz (here), a company that produces products that are both educational and fun and show a profitable use of humor.  The third was perfume, the presentation focusing on the making of perfume, but mentioning several companies that have become famous for a particular scent (Chanel #5?)

 The fourth presentation focused on aesthetics and on a Kickstart funded startup that makes a pillow entitled the Ostrich Pillow, which is intended for better nap-taking during normally awake times.  This resulted in some excellent class discussion ranging from the advantages of better support and comfort to take such naps (in class?) to the rather strange appearance of the pillow.  You can see the reasons by looking at the website here.  I guarantee you will have a reaction!. All in all another excellent day of presentations – lots of products to pass around, good use of media, etc. 

  I will write a couple more posts on presentations and then a final wrap up of the class, and then go on to other product quality comments.  I once again recommend the blog site here containing a large number of individual student nominations of good and bad products for an insight to present university student values,  some interesting and provocative products, and the range of quality in our industrial output. 

Go Ford!

There is an Interesting article in the March 10 Automobiles section of the Sunday New York Times describing the one liter three cylinder engine that will power the Fiesta and be available for the Mondeo. It is here.   The engine is capable of producing 123 horsepower and 148 foot pounds of torque, with 90% of the maximum torque available at only 1500 rpm.  I realize this is far from the most powerful engine in town, but my 1956 Austin Healey engine produced only 90 horsepower, and the car was a delight to drive, could break 100 mph, and garnered me a number of speeding tickets and the right to compete in amateur road races. Think of 132 horses pulling on your car.  It should move just fine. And think of the weight saved in the car. The article mentions that the weight of the cast-iron block is only 52 pounds, and that one was taken to a show as regular luggage in a suitcase (see photo in article.}

 It is wonderful to see U.S. auto companies expanding  the envelope of their products.  When motorcycles began to radically improve their engine performance a number of years ago (many are now in the 200 hp range) I wondered why so  little was going on with U.S.automobiles.  We seemed happy to be driving around with moderately modified  V-8’s and straight sixes for many years. 

 Whether you like small cars or not, (there is an article on coming Toyota Yari in the same issue which claims the new model is great fun to drive, calling it a “grippy little monster on curving roads”) it is exciting to be able to choose from a greater selection, and find that 40 mpg is obtainable from gasoline power after all. 

 What is driving this increased diversity?  Certainly competition. Probably boredom with SUV’s and cumbersome sedans.  Also re-discovery of the fun of driving and ease of parking small, responsive cars.  A Ford person I know told me that the gasoline engine people are feeling neglected in light of all the attention being  paid to electrified automobiles and showing off their capabilities.   But finally, increased federal mileage requirements play a role, as they have before.

 It is interesting that industry seems almost automatically to fight government regulations, and then often makes money complying with them.  The automobile mileage regulations are typical.  After resisting them strongly, U.S. automohile companies seem to rapidly comply with them, with improved results for all.  It does not seem to be technical ability that stands in the way, but rather inertia and complacency—and the desire to put money into profit, rather than investing on the development of new and improved products.

Stanford Good Product Bad Products course final presentations

The last few sessions of the Course ME 314 are dedicated to the final presentations by student groups on the topics in Chapters 4 through 9 of my Good Products Bad Products book.  The class is divided into groups of four, and each group is given ten minutes for their presentation followed by ten minutes of question and comments from the other students and faculty.  Professor Dave Beach, the teacher of the class, is a hawk on memorable, media intensive, and entertaining talks.  He also encourages the teams to bring examples to class to be passed around, and so far the teams have been on target on all of these.  I have listened to innumerable presentations in schools, businesses, professional groups, and many other environments, and would that they all had been as memorable, media intensive, and entertaining as these.

 The students are asked to find a company that delivers a product in their area of very high quality, and report on the company and product.  So far eight groups have given presentations.  I obviously cannot go into detail on each presentation in a post to a blog, but I will list the topics and give you a link to a web page if one exists.

Four of the first eight presentations were on the topic of human fit – physical, sensory, and cognitive compatibility between the product and the humans using it.  The products were the Boosted Board electrically powered skateboard  with a range of 6 miles on a charge and a top speed of 20 mph, the off-road version of  the Segway vehicle, the Boobypack, a bra somewhat between a sports bar and a bikini top with two pockets to carry such things as a cell phone and credit cards, and a toy under development that allows the user to construct three dimensional structures using various plastic pieces and rubber bands.  The latter is not far enough along to be a company with a web site, but although meant for a younger age group (3 to 7), the students in the class seemed quite fascinated with sample structures they were given to play with. The first three products are well documented in the linked websites.  As a sign of the present age, one of the products (the skateboard) has been developed by Stanford alumni, another (the toy) is being developed by a Stanford graduate student.

 The next three presentations were on the topic of craftsmanship, and focused on Tcho chocolate, Yogitoes yoga towel , and Riddell football helmets.  Chocolate was furnished to everyone for the first, and yoga and helmet demonstrations accompanied the next two.  I gained personally from the chocolate presentation.  I like chocolate so much that I chew it up rapidly and swallowed it.  I learned that if you just leave it in your mouth on your tongue, you can taste it for a very long time before it all melts.  I am trying to learn to do this, in spite of the fact that it is so satisfying to just gulp it down. The demonstrations were very noteworthy  because they involved large and rapid movements in a very small space.

 The eighth presentation was on the topic of emotion and products, and focused on the Kaeng Raeng detox drink.  This is a drink that comes as  a box of powder containing vitamins, proteins, and other “natural” products, and is mixed with water and drunk in lieu of food for a period (3 days? 6 days?).  It is alleged to make you feel better, lose weight, and be healthier.  Upon tasting it, the students in the class were somewhat unconvinced, but the group giving the presentation were quite positive about the product, and the product is obviously loved (emotion) by many people, Products such as this often have a positive emotional affect on people above and beyond nutritional effects – think of spas and meditation.  And positive emotions do seem to correspond to health.

 But I have noticed one bad product in all of this — the adapters needed to connect portable computers to the projection system in the room. The projection system is equipped with a VGA plug —somewhat standard.  It would be nice if no adapters were needed.  But computers (especially Apple’s portables) have smaller plugs, and they seem to become smaller with each version.  If there is one  thing I learned in my aerospace days, it is that larger connectors are more reliable over time.  The adapters to the smaller plugs seem to become intermittent over time, and of course get lost, confused (which one is mine?), and sometimes simply don’t work. 

I used to think Kodak Carousel projects tripped up presentations.  But my experience at giving talks and lectures via digital equipment is that we are gaining in being able to make, organize, and store slides , but losing in system simplicity, especially in places we have not used before—I  have mentioned the "smart" panels in some of the new  buildings at Stanford before. Woe be unto the person unaquainted with these  panels who walks for the first time into a room containing one of them naively expecting to figure out how to show slides without help from a native.  

Problem solving, the internet, and Evgeny Morozov

This post is a bit late because I lost my wallet for the first time in my life this weekend, and have been spending my time ever since communicating with banks, AAA, the Department of Motor Vehicles, and various other agencies which I need to cancel things and send me new ones.  DO NOT EVER LOSE  YOUR WALLET.  In fact, take it out now and remove everything that you don’t regularly use and that you would have to replace if you lost the damn thing—especially if you would have to deal with the DMV.   It turns out that lots of people have lost theirs or had it stolen at some time or another—they just don’t admit it until you let them know you are a member of the club.

 In my next post I will bring you up on the final student presentations in the Stanford Good Products Bad Products course.  The first four were very good indeed.  But in this post I would like to say a few words about an article in the March 3 New York Times that I found both provocative, and enjoyable.  The title of the article was “The Perils of Perfection”, by Evgeny Morozov, and it is here.

 I enjoyed it because living in the midst of the Stanford /Silicon Valley success story, I am surrounded by people and companies extremely enthusiastic and optimistic about the long-term wonderful effects upon humankind of computers and internet and their ability to handle important and difficult social problems. This article is drawn on a book entitled “To Save Everything, Click Here:  The Folly of Technological Solutionism”. (Morozov also wrote “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of the Internet”.)  I find his critical attitude toward the wonders of the internet to be a wonderful counterpoint to the general values of my environment.

 I like the description of engineers as “solutionists”.   It is to some extent true.  I have a good  friend who is an eminent historian (Pulitzer Prize, etc.).  He refers to engineers as “meddlers” rather than “solutionists”.  He and his fellow historians feel that they are trying to understand societies, and engineers are knowingly or unknowingly trying to change them. I am an engineer and have worked all of my professional life finding solutions to problems. To  the extent that I have succeeded I have been a meddler.  But these problems have been relatively straight-forward, and solutions could be found that pleased most people involved.  I do not believe that all problems have solutions of this sort, and certainly not solutions that please everyone {the "perfect" solution}.  Congress is finding that out with regard to problems having to do with medical care, employment, balancing the budget, etc.etc.etc.  What improves the situation for some, makes it worse for others.  Complicated situations involving manyp eople can be improved, but perfect “right” answers are unlikely.

 There is much hope among some of the digerati that ever increasing communication (social networking) and new software allowing the formation of independent political groups and poll-taking (Morozov mentions a software program named Seesaw) will allow answers to be found that will result in solutions to such complicated and critical problems that will please all. I don’t, because different human values and interests are involved and if some people are pleased, others won’t be. Taxes are a good example.

 Morozov goes further and quotes from an essay named “In Praise of Inconsistency” written by the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski,  The  author of this feels that disagreement among  people as to the proper course to take is “the only hope for the human race”.  I won’t go further.  Read and think about Morizov’s essay in the  link above.  I have ordered the book.  I will use it to pick on students and my friends who have been born again by the internet.

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 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.

 

 

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.

Product Quality and High Heeled Shoes

  For those of you following the class discussion blog , which contains the student choices for good products and bad products in the various categories covered in the course—if you double click on the titles, you will get the complete write-ups including the “comment” space, should you care to enter the discussion. Over the quarter, the discussions wll follow the flow of my Good Products Bad Products book.

  The last class consisted of small groups of students commenting on the assignments to date followed by general discussion, and brought up a number of interesting points.  Several comments were made that in many cases human fit and craftsmanship are often neglected because other elements of quality are seen as more important by marketing.  But it is often, if not usually the case that they can and should be improved.  Several examples were in the area of fashion products and cheap knock-offs of same.  The emotional and cultural aspects of such products were seen to often swamp the functional,  and such things as comfort, durability, maintainability, and craftsmanship often suffer. 

  The case of high-heeled shoes came up, as it usually does in this course.  I know women who have spent many years in jobs in which high heeled shoes were standard wear, and, like many people, gained pleasure in following the path of fashion.  But they are now paying the cost of having spent so much time having their toes stuffed into an inadequate and artificially shaped container, and walking with their ankles bent at an unnatural angle.  The cost includes such things as hammer toes, bunions, sore ankles and other miscellaneous foot problems.

 Being a man who has never been accused of being a fashion plate, and one who would probably wobble in high heels, I don’t quite understand the love women have for Jimmy Choo and his colleagues, but I accept that many would, if properly funded, challenge the shoe collection that made Imelda Marcos famous (or infamous).  In fact, I would go further and suggest that looking at history from the binding of feet through the success of en pointe in classical ballet, to the size of Barbie doll feet and the staying power of spike heels high enough to leave the foot almost vertical, some women might be happier with no feet at all, or at least smaller versions relative to the leg, such as those possessed by horses.

 But I won’t go into this obviously unsophisticated male viewpoint, because I have learned that I always lose in the following discussion.  To me, it seems that it should be possible to produce woman’s shoes that not only fit and otherwise do their job well (athletic shoes, boots), but that are extraordinarily beautiful, lead in fashion, and are consistent with the plumage involved in “dressing up”.

 At the end of my Good Products Bad Products book is a simple matrix suggesting that products can be scored according to their success in all of the quality elements in the book.  My sentiments are clear.

 

Human Fit, Craftsmanship, and Good Products Bad Products

At this time, the students in the Stanford Good Products Course have read the first five chapters of my book of the same name, are working on a field research paper, and have turned in their first assignment from the book, which asked them to select a product that they consider to be of high quality and one of low quality as far as both human fit and craftsmanship are concerned, and to write a short essay justifying their choices and perhaps suggesting how to improve the products of low quality.

If you would like an insight into their thinking, there is a blog here which will give you that. You should find it both thought provoking and entertaining. I cannot include all of their essays, because of space limitations, but you will get the idea.  The topics of the first product assignment are human fit and craftsmanship, the content of Chapters 4 and 5 of my book. 

 The first two chapters in the book have to do with the nature of quality and reasons why product quality could and should be improved.  The third chapter is an argument for thinking more deeply about cost, price, and performance, a relationship that is often overly simplified by both producers and consumers.  The problems in the book for the first three chapters are not assigned to the class this year, because of time constraints. 

 Human fit, the topic of Chapter 4, is one of the more obvious and important aspects of product quality, and one that is often overlooked, partly because of the perceived higher priority of short term factors such as cost and schedule in the development of products, and partly because of the tendency of designers to design for people like themselves with respect to such things as age, size, sensory and physical ability, and the tendency of consumers not to give adequate attention to the fit between product and user at purchase. This latter phenomenon can be seen from customers briefly (with embarrassment) lying on a mattress in a store, when at least a full night’s sleep is probably necessary to determine whether their back will be angry with them in the morning.

 Since one goal of my book is to break the non-quantitative aspects of quality into more  approachable topics, I subdivided human fit into physical fit, sensory fit, cognitive fit, complexity, and safety and health.  Much is known about the first three, but often not applied.  Cognitive misfit is especially noticeable in the internet.  Digital electronics and increasingly sophisticated software are resulting in rapidly increasing access to information and communication modes, but Moore’s law does not apply to the brain.  We need a better match, and it is not going to come from  doubling the number of neurons in our brain every two years.  Finally, both the complexity of modern life and health are becoming increasingly important problems.

 Craftsmanship is also critical.  But unfortunately we tend to use  the term more on products involving a large amount of hand labor (the “crafts”).  For a number of reasons, craftsmanship in industrial products, which over time require less and less hand labor, is increasingly important.  Not only does improved craftsmanship often result in improvements in performance, reliability, and durability, but it is aesthetically pleasing and we closely associate it with quality (well-made objects).  Chapter 5 goes into the topic in detail.  The subdivisions of the chapter are (1) Why Do We Care About craftsmanship,(2) The Pleasure and Pride of Craft, (3) The Industry and Culture Problem, (4) The Nature of Craftsmanship, and (5), Some Suggestions of How to Improve Craftsmanship in Industry.

 

 

Outsourcing, Offshoring, and the Stanford Good Products Bad Products class

The Jan 19^th-25^th edition of The Economist focuses on outsourcing and offshoring in its special report, as well as in a short article here.  I will talk more about this in a future post, but as wages in countries such as China and India rise, the advantages of operating overseas become more due to operating in countries that provide customers and that have good supply chains and sources of labor, than to low labor costs.  U.S. companies will therefore not leave such countries as India and China, and they in turn will  operate more in the U.S.  Foxconn is on the way and Cemex has been here for quite a while. 

 The ME 314 course at Stanford has now settled down.  Students at Stanford are allowed to “shop” for courses at the first of every quarter, which means that they can sit in on several for a few meetings before committing to their choices.  This makes for more satisfied and motivated students as well as a bit of extra learning.  The downside is to the professors, who are not quite sure who is in the class for a week or two.

 The class has met three times since the introductory session, with four guest speakers, assigned readings, and assignments for the future.  The first speaker was Stephanie Phillips, who I mentioned in my post of January 15th.  Dave Beach is a believer in the use of video not only for communication, but also for analyzing products, and one of the assignments the students have is to do a bit of field research using video.  The speakers following Stephanie were Scott Doorley and Jonathan Edelman, both with experience in doing such things.

 The fourth speaker was Peter Dreissigacker, who founded a company called Concept 2 with his brother Richard.  Peter was a student of mine in my early teaching days, and remains one of my favorite people.  They both received M.S. degrees in engineering at Stanford in the 1970’s, Peter in Product Design, and Dick in Industrial Engineering.  They were/are both outstanding rowers. Dick rowed in the Olympics, and Peter in the try-outs.  In 1976 they founded Concept 2  in Maine to make competition oars out of composite materials.  They later added a rowing ergometer, and still later a skiing ergometer.

Concept 2 is dedicated to having its products be the best in their class, and have generally succeeded.  Their oars are widely used in top competitions, and their ergometers are top of the line.  A look at the Concept 2 company website gives an indication of some of the things in which they are involved in their quest to not only make extremely high products, but spread  rowing more widely as not only an exciting sport, but also as wonderful exercise. As an example, the photo shows one of the indoor rowing competitions using their ergometers that the company has been sponsoring for 30 years.

Concept 2 is a relatively small company/family with long-term employees.  It is a happy place that is proud of its work.  Needless to say, the employees are unusually healthy, since Dick and Peter set the tone by remaining highly ranked in their age group in the international internet competitions based on concept 2 ergometers.

 This is a  company whose income depends on product quality.  And through their activities, such as the indoor competitions,they have gone far beyond their primary customers (high-level rowers) to expand their community of users.  Even I had one of their  ergometers in my house for many years, and it still is doing yeoman service with my kids and grandchildren.  And I daresay, none of us are being sought after by competition crews.  In fact, i have proven conclusively that I cannot even balance a single scull. 

Stanford course ME 214-314 schedule and introduction

As I promised, the rough schedule that shows what will occur in each meeting of the Good Products Bad Products course is shown here.

At the first meeting of the class, Dave Beach, Adam Grosser, and I first said a few words about ourselves and our interests in quality.  Dave is responsible  for the course and Adam is helping him teach it, and the course uses my Good Products, Bad Products book.  A short resume for Dave is here, and one for Adam is here.  They are old friends and both interested in product quality, but have had very different careers, so they should be a dream team.

After we talked, Dave spent an hour running the students through an exercise meant to show the difference in sensitivity to quality between merely talking and reading about products and using them.   He used two citrus juicers, one a traditional electrically powered one, and one the rather unconventional one designed by Philippe Starck, a very well known designer, shown in the  photo

The students discussed the two of them at great length, easily bringing  up good and bad  points about them.  But then he had had volunteers from the class actually squeeze  juice with them and comment about their reactions to the process as they did it.  As usual, an entirely different and perhaps more insightful set of issues appeared.  And the class heavily turned against the Starck model, even though it is unique, an eye catching design, has no breakable moving parts, requires no electricity, and is perhaps the highest selling product in Alessi stores—Beach and I of course love it.

 In my brief talk, I offered the following reasons why product quality might not be as high as possible; complacency, short-term profit motivation, tradition, lack of priority in education and in industry, and lazy customers.  My book goes into more detail on them, but the last is one of my favorites.  Why do we settle for less quality than we should?

 We consumers tend to be swayed by increasingly sophisticated advertising and “deals” and do not pay enough attention to the long-term usage of products.  Even though I am deeply involved in the issue of product quality, I find myself making decisions with little if any experience in using the product I am thinking of buying.  I too make decisions on the comfort of chairs or beds after sitting or lying on them for a minute or two, and seldom spend a reasonable amount time trying out a product I am considering purchasing —especially because it is often difficult to find the opportunity.

 When I decided my pickup had run its course a couple of years ago, I considered restoring and upgrading  a 1960’s pickup I own that had belonged to my father.  But I did not think I had the time to spend at that point, so I bought a new one.  I took a longer than usual demonstration drive in the city, on some dirt roads, and on the freeway, and of course found it much more impressive than my old one (not surprising since it was brand new, and my old one had definitely run the course). As I said in my post of Jan 16, 2012, which you can see below, my main complaint was that it was too large. But I liked the truck and figured that I could find parking spots that allowed the doors to swing enough to let me enter and exit, that I could put running boards on it to make it easier for my wife to enter and exit, and that I could keep the stuff that ended up behind the seat organized.  And I figured that I could open the tail gate and get in and out of the bed from the back to reach objects.  But I did not test all of these assumptions before I bought it.

 Had I tried to park it in a tight lot, get stuff out from behind the seat, help older people get in and out of it, and gotten in and out of the bed a couple dozen times myself —in other words, better squeezed the oranges— my decision would probably have been to re-work the 60’s truck, since for my use all modern 8 foot bed (full-sized) pickups are difficult to use because they are much larger than they need to be.  This summer I will attack my 60’s truck. 

The Stanford University 2013 Good Products Bad Products Course

January 8^th, 2013, is the first day of the winter quarter Good Products, Bad Products course (ME 214, 314) at Stanford University.  I began this course in the 1980’s, and it has gone through several changes in name, course number, and department base since then.   David Beach has been teaching it since I retired in 1999, and has changed it in many ways, although he has kept the intent of the course the same.  He has continued to use my notes, and now that they have been published as a book, he is using it as a text in the course.  Although it is listed as a graduate course in the school of engineering, it will include students from other parts of the campus as well.  The majority of the class will consist of regular Stanford students, although there will be some part-time students who will be taking it remotely over the internet. 

 Classes will include a number of guest speakers representing companies and individuals concerned with and producing high quality products, lectures from David Beach, and discussions of the reading material, the speakers, and whatever other product-quality related concerns arise during the quarter. They will not only be reading and discussing my book, but will be  doing exercises similar to the ones listed at the end of the chapters.  They will write short papers on each, and I will talk about them and include some of the more interesting ones on this blog. I will attach a rough schedule to my next post to give  you an idea of what occurs in each class meeting.

The course concludes with a series of consistently impressive presentations on the material in my book.  Groups of students select the topic areas, do appropriate research, and being a bright and talented bunch with a love of media, come up with presentations that are entertaining as well as educational.  I obviously cannot deliver the entire course in a  blog to those of you reading my posts, but not taking the course.  But I will keep you in touch with the course, forward student work when appropriate and interesting to you, and in doing so hopefully expose you a bit to the thinking of present day Stanford students.  I will also continue to write posts on aspects of product quality design and manufacturing, and other topics not covered in the course.  Please comment  on my course-related posts, and I will forward the comments to the class, should they fit the activities that are under way.  The more diversity in input to the students, the better, and any comments you make should result in lively discussions.

Although I have been retired from active teaching for many years, I continue to occupy an office on campus, drink the coffee,  and heckle the people who continue to do the work.  I still find the opening of winter quarter to be exciting.  Although California weather is hard to complain about, it becomes a bit wetter in the San Francisco area, and the general energy level of the academic enterprise picks up a bit because it is not as much fun to go out and play. Hopefully I can convey a bit of this to you.

Welcome aboard!

New Year's Resolution for People Making Industrial Products

I resolve to do what I can to improve the product I am working on —in fact to strive to help it become the best of its kind in the world—or if I think it is already is the best of its kind in the world, to work on improving it anyway, because someone is close behind.

 In doing so, I resolve to consider not only the more easily measurable aspects of quality discussed by David Garvin in his now classic November 1987 HBR article (performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability) but also the more qualitative aspects covered in the Adams Good Products Bad Products book (perceived performance, performance/cost ratio, craftsmanship, consistency with human users and cultural values, aesthetic issues,  sensitivity to finite resources and the environment, and finally emotional appeal. (Garvin did mention aesthetics and perceived quality in his article, which was entitled Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality, but brushed over them as being functions of individual judgment—Adams says hooray for individual judgment).

 Finally I resolve to remain aware of the two cultures (the scientific and humanistic) mentioned in the Adams People and Products post of  Nov 1, 2012, and to the extent that I have a bias, for instance, toward quantitative reasoning and logic (which are good)  and away from aesthetics and feelings (which are not only good but powerfully affect people’s judgment of quality), or vice versa,  I will do my best to get over it.

Holidays, Ants, and a Computer Break

Having told you of the pleasures of welding in my post of  November 19th  , I am proud to say that the ant I was working on is now one of my wife’s favorite yard animals (of which she has many).  In fact it is featured in our Christmas card, which is shown below and which I am sending you with hopes that you are enjoying an outstanding holiday season.

I am giving my hard-working computer a break through the end of the year.  So I will not be posting again until New Years day, at which point I will be back on my Monday, Thursday schedule with lots to say about the winter quarter Stanford Good Products Bad Products course, and of course the products we make for ourselves.

 

 

Reijo Leppanen and collecting bad products

I recently received a nice message from Reijo Leppanen, a Finish Engineer.  It began “I have just recently read the Good Products, Bad Products book.  I enjoyed it indeed”.  But even better than telling me he enjoyed my book, he went on to say “I’m myself a hobbyist in bad products, especially since an individual cannot avoid them nowadays.  See here:” and then he gave me a link to his website, which is here.  He has apparently been pursing this hobby since 1998. I found his website wonderful and hope you do also.

 The site contains photographs of over 250 products, along with the price, the names of the seller and the manufacturer, and a brief note of what is wrong with them and sometimes what should be done to improve them. He describes this hobby as collecting products that are “miserably designed, miserably manufactured, miserably documented, or otherwise miserable”.

 Having oriented the Good Products Bad Products book somewhat toward people involved in producing products, I occasionally wish I had written one for the general public to encourage consumers to think more critically about the quality of the products they buy.  But I never thought about encouraging people to adopt criticizing products as a hobby.  Great idea, Reijo Leppanen.  I will definitely bring his website to the attention of the 150 or so students that will be taking the course this year, and spread word of it by other means.

 As part of the course, students read and discuss my book, and submit examples of good and bad products consistent with the elements of product quality being discussed at the time, along with photographs and short paragraphs describing why they consider the products to be good or bad.  The course uses software called Coursework, which allows the students to see and discuss each other’s work, and a Wiki which allows them to build an ongoing list of the products.  I will be discussing these in my blog posts during the Stanford Winter Quarter, which runs from early January through late March.

 I give them these exercises to encourage them to be more critical of product quality, and in fact wrote the book to give them particular elements of product quality to focus upon.  Hopefully they too will become hobbyists and follow the lead of Mr. Leppanen. 

 

Product Quality and Balance

Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote a poem entitled “The One Hoss Shay”, that still is referenced by people associated with product design and development.  It is about a mythical vehicle that is so well designed and crafted that it lasts 100 years without failing in any way, and then completely collapses as all of the parts simultaneously reach the end of their life span.  If you want to read it, look here.

 More of such balance in reliability and durability would be nice in modern products.  Many products are annoying because some parts fail much earlier and more often than others, until finally these parts are no longer available and the whole product is junked.

  But there is another type of balance, having more to do with quality.  The photo is of my wife Marian in her 2004 Acura TSX, leaving early in the morning to control the world.  We bought the car new to make up for a beloved Honda CRX that she drove for 18 years, until an evil person roared out of a driveway and destroyed it. She didn’t want a big car, needed to drive grand-kids and friends around, likes nimble and responsive cars, and at times can be a mild hot-rodder.  The TSX is neither the fastest, the most beautiful, the most luxurious, the roomiest, or the best handling automobile available, but it is pretty good on all fronts. She has loved it absolutely for eight years. For her (and actually for me) it is an extraordinary blend. It is based on the so-called European Accord body (a bit smaller than the Accord sold in the U.S.)  It has front wheel drive and the engine produces about 200 horsepower and is easy on fuel.  It goes faster than either of us needs it to and is fitted with plenty of digital gadgets—Navigation system, climate control, sound system— but not so many that we will die messing with them while driving (a friend of mine has ceded the driving to his wife while he attends to the much more elaborate navigation system, the cell phones, the doors and windows, the TV, the climate control and sound system, and so on.) The TSX is also clearly a product of Honda, and we have always liked such things.

 I spoke of David Garvin’s now classic article in the Nov 1, 1987 Harvard Business Review, entitled “Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality” in my post of  Nov. 1, 2012. The dimensions he discusses are performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability, aesthetics, and perceived quality. The TSX gets high grades on all of them.  In my book Good Products, Bad Products, I discuss performance and cost, human fit, craftsmanship, emotional response, aesthetics, cultural fit, and global fit.  The TSX also gets high grades on all of them.

 In the design, development, and marketing of many products, we often tend to emphasize only a few components of quality.  These days we are excited about digital control.  I just bought a new dishwasher.  Since the old one failed in its rather complicated control circuitry, and since I couldn’t find replacement parts that I considered reasonably priced, I bought a new one with the fewest cycles and options I could find.  I finally found one with only(?) five possible cycles, three options, a delay, and a large row of warning lights.  Of course, we only use the “normal” button.  The dishwasher will probably fail because of the circuitry necessary to allow it to do something we don’t ever use.  As people used to say when I worked at the Jet Propulstion Lab, “Reliability is fewer parts”—that's electrical as well as mechanical.

 Good Products should rate high in all components of quality—just like the One Hoss Shay did in reliability and durability.

 

 

C.P. Snow, the Two Cultures, and Product Quality

C.P. Snow, a scientist turned novelist, is remembered partly for a talk he gave (the Rede Lecture of 1959 ) entititled "The Two Cultures", in which he made the point that the intellectual life of western society was split into two cultures, the humanistic and the scientific, and that this hindered our ability to solve many problems. This was followed  by a widely read book of the same title. I talked about this in my post of 07/29/2012.

 From my experience in industry and in academia, the issue is very much alive.  The illustration by Matt Collins is from a column by Lawrence Kraus in the 07/29/2009 Scientific American, which celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the Snow’s Rede Lecture. His column can easily be applied to the present election campaigns. I am personally a believer in Snow's thesis, and since I enjoy both of these cultures, I have been often frustrated by people’s tendency to join one and criticize the other.

 The outlooks of both cultures are necessary to secure high product quality.  In a classic article entitled Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality in the November 1987 Harvard Business Review, David Garvin discussed the topic of product quality, and then listed the following necessary elements— Performance, Features, Reliability, Conformance, Durability, Serviceability, Aesthetics, and Perceived Quality.  This was a time when U.S. industry had spent great effort on, and achieved great success in radically improving the quality of its products, spurred on by Japanese competition and the realization that improved quality led not only to added value, but decreased costs.

 But although recognizing the importance of the final two elements, Garver did not emphasize them as hard as the others, because as he explained, he felt that judgment was not as universal in the case of aesthetics, and intangibles, such as advertising and brand names, influenced the customer"s perception of quality. The first six of his topics are  easier to quantify, and be handled in a more scientific way (measured), but aesthetics and perceived quality certainly play a large role in the decision process of the consumer. 

 When I wrote my Good Products Bad Products Book I suggested a number of elements that were perhaps more on the humanistic side than the scientific—perception of performance and cost, human fit, craftsmanship, overall emotional impact, aesthetics, elegance and sophistication, symbolism and cultural fit, and finally consistency with global limits ( a topic both scientific and humanistic).  I did so because I felt that they received less attention than they deserved in Industry, compared with the first six listed by David Garvin.

 Although both scientific (if you would technical and quantitative) thinking and humanistic thinking are required for high product quality, continual effort is necessary to cause such a thing to happen.  Even in the relatively large design activity in the Stanford Engineering school, where my office is located and where everyone would probably claim they support the merging of Snow’s two cultures, a walk around shows local areas where the  white boards are covered with equations, and others where they are covered with sketches and post-it notes—not many with both.  Much of the university, like much of the world, seems to tend to divide over mathematics.  A few years ago, the  Stanford Anthropology Department actually formally split into those who worshipped such things as probability and statistics, and those who did not.  Fortunately, it has now been put back together, and can resume arguing about which of two equally necessary approaches is more important.

 In many companies with which I am familiar, the split is even more apparent.

 

Made in America?

 

There is the beginning of a Made in America “movement” which may become a wonderful opportunity for America to prove that it makes great products. An article reflecting the feelings behind this movement is here.

Many of the businesses advertising that they are manufacturing totally in the U.S. are small companies, who knowingly or  unknowingly are carrying the U.S. quality flag because of the attention being given them.  If their products are of unusually high quality for their price (perhaps the best in the world), the world will notice (as will we who live here) and we will all benefit,   If they are not of high quality, the world (and we) will also notice.

 These products will receive some boost from the present attention to unemployment and outsourcing in the U.S., but global business is here to stay, and no matter how patriotic we are, in the long run we are not going to be impressed by the label if the products are not at lest competitive with those taking advantage of outsourcing and overseas manufacturing (or imported).  Hopefully those products aligning themselves with the Made in America label will be outstanding and recognized as such.  Making sure that they are is a good goal for those involved.  If I were 20  years younger I would seriously consider joining such a company.

Morals and Products, The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt, Part 2 and 3

The subtitle of the Righteous Mind book I mentioned in my last post is “Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion”.  Sound topical?  As I said, the first part of the book is devoted to making the point that we are highly motivated by “automatic” thinking instead of reasoning.  The second part of the book is entitled “There’s More to Morality than Harm and Fairness”.  He begins by emphasizing that morality is culturally based, and that there are many moralities in the world, none particularly “better” than the others.  As examples, he mentions the morality of autonomy, commonly found in western cultures, the morality of community, in which the individual is subservient to larger issues, and the morality of divinity, in which the individual is even less the main issue. He then discusses a number of foundations of morality, and their reason for existence.  He finishes the section by talking about the morality of politics, and the foundations that they are based upon.  In particular, he brings out that conservatism has a broader base of morality than liberalism, and therefore has an innate advantage in the long run.  (Don’t argue with me—read the book and argue with Haidt.  I am a middle of the road person, which is one reason I like his book).

The final section, which I of course liked the most, is entitled “Why Morality blinds and binds”.  It is about out strong allegiance to groups (tribes), and why we are wiling to accept beliefs that we might ordinarily question in order to belong to our group.  Why, for instance, do Catholics accept the ban on contraception, even though their members routinely take advantage of it.  And why do the Tea Party members argue for things that will adversely affect them?  Why can’t Congress seem to agree on how to balance the budget?  And what’s with this Christian—Moslem thing?  Haidt’s concluding words are “Morality binds and blinds.  It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle.  It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say”.

This is in fact, pretty much the state of the world right now.  But what does morality of the type Haidt is discussing have to do with the quality of industrial products?  I am sure you have noticed that discussions about such things as pollution and the environment, petroleum usage, the relative advantages of various motorcycles and automobiles, outsourcing, and the advantage of technology that sustains life beyond a certain point, are based on the ideals of the people involved, and often approach religious arguments in fervor and attempts at conversion. We stand with our group, rather than compromising.  Because, after all, our group is moral, and others are not.  As proof, they are (in favor of/not in favor of) regulating firearms—or spending tax money on developing alternate sources of energy.

Quality, Decision Making, and Logic

I am particularly fascinated by the illogical and non-scientific components of human decision making — even among logicians and scientists.  Three of my favorite books have to do with this, and I recommend them to anyone who has not read them – particularly if they are involved in engineering, science, or business and concerned with product quality.  They are not fresh off the press, but I recently looked through them, and was again pleased with their style and message. 

The first two, Predictable Uncertainty, by Dan Ariely, and Nudge, by Richard Thaler, and Cass Sunstein, are often associated with behavioral economics (see the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman discussed in my post of Dec 15, 2011).  Ariely’s book, which reposed in the New York Times top seller list for a considerable time,  contains a wondrous collections of examples of “illogical” decision_making drawn from research in the field and thought-provoking facts (a tape measure once owned by John F. Kennedy went for $48,875 dollars at an auction, and the 70^th home run ball hit by Mark McGwire  for three million at another one).  Arieli’s background was originally in psychology, although he at one point also earned a Ph,D in business.  He now holds forth as a Professor at Duke and in many other locations.

Richard Thaler, co-author of Nudge, is a professor in the Chicago School of Economics, with a background in economics and is a behavior economist.  He obviously a stong person, because one does not think of this school as a wondrously supportive environment for behavioral economists.  Cass Sunstein is a Law Professor at Harvard, although he is now on leave as part of President Obama’s staff (Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs) where he is attempting to better apply the messages in the book .  Among other things the book proposes (and backs up) the amazing power of small interventions to change people’s behavior.  An example is the difference between requiring effort to volunteer organs on death (complete a form that you are willing to donate), vs requiring effort to not volunteer  (complete a form that you are not willing to donate) . The resulting difference is huge, and for many reasons.  But at least in California, we are using the wrong approach and complaining about the scarcity of transplant organs.  Nudge is in a sense a bit more applied than Predictable Uncertainty, but built on the same principles.

The third book, How Pleasure Works, was written by Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale, It is also extremely pertinent to Product Quality.  The first two books bear more on how and why people make decisions, this one is more about the mechanics of and reasons for emotional response.  Bloom talks about origins of emotion, and how strongly and why people respond to non-functional aspects of objects – authenticity, rarity, history, uniqueness, and essences of objects that are based on our experiences and our species.

All three of these books are beautifully written, and amusing to read.  The reader cannot help by identify with the examples.  We often come across “silly” behavior in experiments and situations, only to realize that we either also act in that way, or might if put in the situation.  These books guarantee a great deal of such experiences. An example might be the increased value placed on something one owns, such as a used and faithful automobile) versus what one might pay for an identical object one does not own (an identical car on a used car lot) – this often appears in the discrepancy between asking price from an owner and offer from a prospective buyer.

Buttons representing each book are on the right side of the blog under recommended books, and clicking on them will take you rapidly to the appropriate Amazon page, should you want more information.

 

Social Networking, My Blog, and Product Quality

As some of you know, I am in the process of adding Twitter and Facebook, and perhaps LinkedIn to my blog.  I realize I can no longer escape social networking if I still want to communicate with much of the human race.  Given a few weeks I will probably have them all interacting reasonably well and have forgotten the difficulty of entering an activity that has been going on for some time.  To those of  you who have neither taken the Stanford Good Products Bad Products course, been following my blog, or otherwise heard me rant about product quality, a few words concerning my present interests are perhaps in order.  To  those of you following my neophyte attempts at social networking, any help is appreciated.

In the latter part of the 20^th century, amazing gains were made in what was then called manufacturing quality.  These were stimulated by international competition appearing first in northern Europe, and then in Asia.  The results were impressive in product reliability, cost reduction, and customer appeal.  The campaign was based on sound economic and management principles, and motivated by metrics. 

But after these amazing gains, attention shifted to other aspects of industrial production, and even during the “manufacturing quality revolution”, many aspects of product quality that are not easily described by metrics were passed by.  I am interested in overall product quality, which includes such things as human, cultural and environmental fit, craftsmanship, emotional appeal, aesthetics, sophistication, and elegance.  It is much more difficult for people in business and engineering to consider love than performance.

But even with performance, we have a problem.  We use obsolete measures and tend to focus on product features which result in quick sales and immediate profits.  Do you often have the opportunity to fully use the 0 to 60 time of your car?  Should  you really need a new iPhone every year?

We accept present quality because of tradition and the values inculcated in economic systems, industry and in the professionals who work there.   If you think a bit about products you produce and/or use, you can come up with many valid insights as to how they could be improved, often with no increase, or even a decrease in cost.  Do we really need all of the bells and whistles on products, that when added together keep us confused and constantly referring to our products to see how to adjust and maintain them?  Are we perhaps becoming weary of the ever increasing choices we have among products that essentially do the same thing?  Finally, have we become innovation crazy?  Do we need more apps or better apps.  Do we need to use the entire capability of the integrated circuit, or just what we really need.  Do we need more and more of everything, or just what is compatible with our limited abilities and resources?  Technology is supposed to serve us, not the opposite.

I recently wrote the book Good Products Bad Products (McGraw Hill, New York, N.Y., 2011) about such things, and added the blog and now social networking to try to encourage more thought about this issue.  I believe that in this day and age, those making and buying the best products win—and in the process feel very good about themselves—why not you (and us)?

Two More Dave Beach Questions

In Dave Beach and my “conversation” described in my April 16 post, the next two questions from him, after “why is manufacturing important”, were “why is product quality important”t, and “how are the chapter concepts in your Good Products, Bad Products book related”.

Product Quality is  important for three reasons:

     1.  Competitiveness

     2.  The Quality of Life

     3.  Motivation and Self Image

For the foreseeable future, businesses will continue to compete, probably globally, and hopefully material well-being will rise, at least in poorer nations.  It is also probable that businesses in wealthier countries will have continuing problems competing with businesses in poorer countries in the production of  lower quality products,  Also higher quality products have a marketplace advantage and are both more attractive at the same cost (Toyota automobiles), and offer higher profitability at a higher cost (Apple iPhones),

Technology is hopefully for the purpose of benefiting us humans.  It should satisfy our needs, make our lives more interesting, keep us healthier,  maintain our environment,  and decrease hardship. If it does not do such things, it fails.  In a sense, overall product quality can be measured by how much a product improves the quality of life.

It is extremely rewarding to be involved in the production of use of an outstanding product.  Organizations producing such products and the people working in them are proud of their role.  People  associated with them become more involved in their work and more productive.  The United States used to be very proud of the label “Made in America”.  Wouldn’t it be nice to get there again – to feel that whatever we produced, it was the best in the world?

The Chapters in my book have to do with the performance, cost, and price of industrial products, compatibility of the products with the human user, craftsmanship in the production of them, emotional reaction to them, aesthetic appeal of them, the symbolism and cultural fit of them, and consistency of the products with global constraints (environment, etc.)  These factors are related in that they are all essential in the production of them and benefits to the user, and difficult to handle quantitatively.  At first glance such things as performance, cost, and price, seem easily measurable, but it is more difficult to do so over the lifetime of products and when the subtleties of perception are included.  As one proceeds through the chapters, metrics become more and more difficult to describe the quality of the product and the reaction of the user.  Love?  Beauty?  Elegance?  Symbolism? When it comes to global constraints, it becomes simpler to attach numbers to such things as supply of resources, severity of pollution, global warming, and loss of species, but for many (most?) people there seems to be a good bit of resistance to using these numbers and the desire to  collectively bury our heads in the sand and hope the problems are not real. 

I will delve further into this in a future post. 

General Topics on Manufacturing and Product Quality

Since the Stanford ME 314 Good Products, Bad Products course is now over, I will leave the topic.  Should any of you reading this blog be teaching a similar course, or if you would like to do so, contact Dave Beach ([email protected]), and he will be glad to send you information or conspire with you.

I am scheduled to give a few talks on my book, as part of the routine of bringing it to people’s attention.  Dave and I did a “conversation” on the topics contained in the book to a couple of hundred people on the Stanford campus last week, and it was fun.  The format called for Dave to ask me questions, and for me to answer them as best as I could.  I actually had the easier role, because I had the option of muttering a few words and then saying “what do you think, Dave?”. 

I thought it might be of interest to discuss a few of the questions and answers (?) with you.  The questions are here.  Look through them and think about how you might answer them.  I thought that beginning with the next post, I would give you my personal, perhaps biased opinion on some of them.  But just so you know that the U.S. is not alone in worrying about such questions, here is an interesting article on Japanese concerns about the topic of manufacturing that was on the front page of  the April 16 edition of the New York Times.

Interesting use of CourseWork software in Stanford Good Products Bad Products course (ME 314)

The Good Products, Bad Products course at Stanford (ME 314) uses the Stanford course management system CourseWork, now an open source release shared with other schools.  Stanford is now involved in the Sakai project, so that CourseWork 3.0 will no longer be available, but comparable software will be through the Sakai project.  For information on the Sakai project, click here.

In brief, CourseWork allows easy communication over the internet between students and instructors.  One feature of it is a discussion forum, in which student work can be submitted to the instructor and comments/grades/etc. from the instructor submitted to the student.  The work can also be made available to the other students.

David Beach, who now teaches the course, brings in many guest speakers who are involved in the design, development, and marketing of high quality products.  He also assigns my Good Products, Bad Products book, and has the students do the thought problems at the end of the chapters and submit written answers. There is some discussion of the book in class, but also many other activities that require class time.  Also the class is large (100 + students) and many of the students are off-campus taking the course over the internet.  Discussion is extremely helpful in attempting to better understand product quality, so how can he assure feedback to the students and promote discussion outside of class?

The on-campus students are divided into groups of four, and at the end of the quarter each group is asked to give a presentation centered around a company doing a particularly good job of achieving one of the components of high quality contained in my book.  Dave is a fanatic on presentation quality that includes efficient use of media, so he is able to limit each presentation to ten minutes, plus five minutes for questions. The presentations are typically very good indeed.

This year the groups were asked to review the individual student submissions to the thought problems in the book that pertain to the category of their final presentation, give those students feedback on  CourseWork  (open to all), and select the ones they believed to be the best.  This year there were four groups giving presentations on each chapter, so the results of this "pick the best ones" exercise provided  potential additional information for assigning final grades in the course. The groups are thinking about their presentation, so they have a certain amount of "expertise" on the topic, and the individual student submissions help the groups  think about their final presentation as well as resulting in more feedback.   In addition, there are general comments by the students on each other’s submissions.  All of  this added to more discussion outside of class.

This was the first time this approach to encouraging outside discussion and evaluation between the students was used , and I thought it worked quite well, and with a few changes will work even better in the future.    There will supposedly be new “CourseWork” type software available next year that will be similar, but improved. I am hoping for the similarity, because one problem I find with much computer software is that as soon as one learns to use it well, it changes, often by adding new features that add to its complexity and make it more difficult for new users.

After-thoughts on the Stanford Course ME 314 Good Products, Bad Products

 

Due to my time constraints, there were no final student presentations in my post on the chapter in the Good Prodcts, Bad Products course entitled Symbolism and Cultural Values (Chapter 8).  The students did submit individual assignments, which first of all asked them to choose a subculture of which they felt a part and then to choose the product that was most symbolic of this culture, choose the product that was most symbolic of them, and finally choose a product that was not at all symbolic of them.  As I have been doing, I will link you to the student submissions from the 2010 class.  One of the summary pages lists the responses to the first two “choices” above, and is here.  The other lists the responses to the third and fourth “choices” above and is here.  The numbers correlate between the two pages, if you want to follow individuals.  I did not include responses to the question as to whether the product most symbolic was symbolic of them. They were to some extent, but most of of the students, to their credit, resisted the stereotyping of the product.

I am sorry that the time did not allow more complete coverage of this topic, because it is my feeling that as population densities, and population in general, rise, there is more and more desire, and possibly need, for people to belong to a culture (or sub culture) that they respect and admire and that shares their values.  Industrial products play a role in this.  Think of the Prius, the Parker shotgun, the slow cooker, the Harley Davidson, the  private jet, the home steam espresso/capuccino maker, the recliner, the gas grill, the Ford F-150 pickup, and the iPhone.  The traditional direction of industry, has been to try to attract an increasing segment of the population with a product.  This results eventually in a situation which we now face with midsize four-door automobiles or kitchen appliances – they vary only slightly in details from one manufacturer to another throughout the world, or at least the “developed” world.

I am a fan of the traditional trucks in India, which have typically been sold without cabs, allowing the owners huge variation in applying and furnishing the cab—a lower income version of the days in which one would have a custom cab built for one’s Rolls Royce chassis and drive train. I suspect this will not last, and within a few years, Indian trucks will start looking the same as those in the so-called developed world.

 In my high school and college days, there was a wide variation in personal possessions, partly because there was not much money around.  As an example, when I was in high school cars were old and often repaired, and we would modify them partly because we wanted to put a personal mark on our possessions, and in the process became even more closely associated with our cult.  Extreme lowering (the forbears of low-riders), extreme funk, extreme (in those days) speed, etc.

The sub-cultures in my high school were both racial and reflections of the income level and urbanity of the junior  high schools that fed our high schools.  Because of the time and the age group, there was considerable animosity between the sub-cultures, extending to fights, social snubbing, and other painful behavior.  But it was exciting and educational, and we all felt good about being members of our “car” club, even the Sultans of Rialto.

Of course there were other more significant sub-cultural divides—Caltech students vs. Pasadena City College students (source of girls, to the annoyance of the male students there), nerds vs. fuzzies, small school vs. big school, etc.  I never will forget the thrill and anxiety experienced when I escorted a U.S.C sorority girl to a formal sorority/fraternity dance at U.S.C., and won the presigious raffle prize of the night— a set of Tommy Trojan cufflinks.  Fortunately my date did not rat on me, so I returned to Caltech unharmed.

Different cultures and sub cultures cause life to be rich.  Stanford is much more interesting now that it has become more global and offers much more cultural diversity.  California is wonderful because one does not need to travel far to experience different cultures.  A casual trip with local stops from Stanford University into the Central Valley, visiting say Biola and Fresno, and returning by way of Monterey and San Francisco, making sure that the final lap includes Hunter’s Point and East Palo Alto, gives one a fascinating experience with many cultures without the need for a trans ocean flight. Long live cultural diversity.  May industrial products encourage it!

Product Quality and Longevity

One thing I noticed in the ME314 class I have been reporting on, was a focus on new products.  This is in fact typical of our society.  This completely overlooks the value of products that have served the owner well for a long time.  Sometimes, they almost become a part of the owner.  This is a photo of me in my Carhartt jacket, which I bought some time ago—at least ten years.  My son the farmer discovered Carhartt work clothes and suggested that I buy one.  It was quite expensive for work clothes at the time, but I bought it, and plan perhaps to be buried in it.  As you can see, it has seen some hard service, and it is stained and faded.  But never has the zipper failed, it has withstand many brutal slashes and snags, it doesn’t mind water, oil, mud, or most other materials, and it keeps me properly warm and snuggy when the California climate turns treacherously cold. It is part of me, and I don’t want a new one, a cleaner one, or one with  more bells and whistles. To me it is priceless.  And oddly enough, Goodwill Industries would probably  not accept it.

I told this to Marian,my wife, and she countered with a younger, but similarly important garment that has become part of her in only a year or two.  Happily, I noticed it in a student submission on good products and told her about it.  It is a woman’s vest made by Scottevest. Like my Carhartt coat, it was fairly expensive for a vest, but she looks swell in it, and can you believe, it has 24 pockets inside.  Here she is looking for something in it.  She originally bought it to travel, which it was originally designed for, and it is exceptional.  It doesn’t totally replace a suitcase, but all the gadgets, potions, and entertainments she takes with her on trips fit in the pockets, and from the outside, she looks slick as a snake. 

Of course, she now wears it almost constantly no matter what she is doing, and probably has forgotten where such things as purses and fannypacks are.  She loves it far above its original price, and although she says it is beginning to look a bit threadbare, I’ll bet she wears it for many years rather than buy a new one.

Behavioral economists refer to rigorous experiments that show the additional value we place on products that we have owned for long periods of time and have come to love.  You have probably experienced this, if you have ever tried to sell something of this sort and been astonished at how little people will pay for it.  I now keep everything I love that I can.  A storage problem, but would you throw away one of your old pets?

Of course, this isn’t the optimal economic response for  Carhartt and Scottevest.  They now have a broad line of products (men and women) and are constantly coming out with “improved” models, which they might like Marian and me to buy.  But they keep their prices high and their profits reasonable. and as long as they keep their quality  high, everyone should be happy.  

Final post on Stanford ME314 Good Products, Bad Products course

Since my last post, the final two sets of  “good product, bad product” examples were submitted and student groups wrote summaries and gave presentations on them. The first of these was aesthetics, elegance and sophistication, and the second had to do with products that were consistent with a finite earth.  For the first, students were asked to choose a product that they thought was simply beautiful and one that they thought was unbelievably repulsive.  Also to choose a third product that they believed to be extremely elegant and sophisticated.  They were  then asked to justify their choices, and conjecture upon how they could be improved, and what the improvement might do to the cost of the product.  A student paper summarizing the products is here.  Examples of beautiful products from the 2011 course, are shown here;.  Repulsive ones are here.  Ones showing elegance and sophistication are here.

The student groups chose Cartagas (two companies of this name produce “Cuban” cigars, but only one of them is in Cuba), Tesla Motors, Ziiro watches, and Victoria’s Secret.

For the second, the students were asked to think of products that that harmed the earth's environment, and changes could lessen their negative impact .  A student summary of the responses is shown here.  And examples from the 2011 course are shown here. I missed the final student presentations, as I was out of town.  However, Professor Beach and Julie Shryne, the teaching assistant in the course, had many positive things to say about them.  And judging from the quality of the students and the preceeding presentations, I am sorry I missed them.

Speaking of Professor Beach, those of you not having taken the course might be interested in knowing a bit about him, since is not only a superlative teacher, but has been responsible for turning what were the traditional student shops into not only vastly improved facilities, but an extremely exciting and innovative center at Stanford (the Produce Realization Laboratory).  He has an interesting back ground which includes study in the liberal arts, manufacturing experience, engineering degrees, and a strong dedication to video production. He best of all, a wonderful person, filled with good spirits, high motivation, and a dedicated and hard worker.  I am proud to count him among my friends.   A good overview of David Beach and his interests can be seen here.

Update #5 Stanford University course ME 314

Two more Good Products, Bad Products topics have been covered by student presentations since the last post.  Four of them focused on Craftsmanship.  The companies chosen were Heath Ceramics, Ferrari, West Coast Classic and Customs, and Casa Na Avore.  Edith Heath founded Heath Ceramics in the 1940’s, and the company, has clung to her standards, and several of her designs, as it has slowly grown.  Ferrari is wedded to high craftsmanship for both performance and traditional reasons.  West Coast Classic and Customs is a local company that specializes in both restoration to original (or better) condition, or resto-rods.  Casa Na Avore is a Brazilian architecture form that specializes in tree houses.  

The next four groups gave presentation on companies/products that dealt with emotion and human needs.  The first two were Tone Fitness (dumbbells), Disney (Disneyland), Diageo (Captain Morgan Spiced Rum), and Phillip Morris (Marlboro cigarettes).  The group presenting Tone Fitness stressed the user support and motivational information, and did an interesting informal survey that correlated love of the product with the frequency of its use.  Apparently people who buy exercise equipment and do not use it grow to  hate it, whereas those who use it regularly become quite fond of it.  Disneyland needs no explanation.  I have had many opportunities to visit it, since when my kids were growing up I lived in Southern California.  I clearly remember how much I hated to take them to it, and strangely enough, what a good time I had when there.  People like to criticize it, its prices, its long lines, etc., but it truly is a marvel.  Even the French now like it. 

It was interesting that both liquor and cigarettes were chosen this year as examples of products that were associated with strong emotions and, for better or worse, strong needs.  I was embarrassed to realize I had devoted little attention to drugs such as nicotine and alcohol in my book.  They are both endemic to our species, and highly controversial. An interesting point brought up in conjunction with Marlboro cigarettes, is that their advertising budget continues to climb even though it is now restricted in format.  They are putting more of it into sponsoring athletic events, point of  purchase, and, of course, in countries other than the U.S.  An interesting statistic about alcohol, is that is apparently involved in one out of every 25 deaths (75,000 total, 16,000 in automobiles), 40% of suicides, and 60% of murders.  And yes, I drink it.

The presentations, as is usual for the course, were top notch and highly entertaining, complete with volunteers from the audience and costumes.  I think it fair to say that Dave Beach (and I) were quite satisfied.

I am not including URL’s for these companies and products, because your browser will have no problem in finding them, should you want to find out more. The submissions by last year's students for products showing good craftsmanship are shown here, and for products showing poor craftsmanship here.  Similarly those paying strong attention to good fit with emotions and needs are shown here.  Those doing less well at considering emotions and needs are here.

Course Update #2 - Lecturers and Human Fit

The students in the Stanford Good Products, Bad Products course are now interacting with guest lecturers, reading  and discussing chapters of my book, and submitting examples of good and bad products on the topics of the book, beginning with Chapter 4, Human Fit. 

Recent Guest Lecturers were Dave Franchino, the President of Design Concepts, Inc, and Matt Lonoci, Founder and President of Matteo.  Franchino founded very successful design firm in Wisconsin after an equally successful career at General Motors, and is one of the more eloquent and thoughtful designers around.  Lonoci, after briefly working in the financial arena, founded a company that makes high quality fabric products, in particular bedding. He is not only a fascinating story teller about quality in a product area that stdents in the class are typically not familiar with, but also a strong proponent of local manufacturing and treating employees well.

A word about the student examples.  At the end of the quarter there will be presentations on each of the book topics, beginning with Chapter 4.  The first three chapters have been read and thoroughly discussed, but because of the time constraints of the class, the students will only submit examples for chapters 4 through 9.  Students will be giving more formal presentations in the form of media-based cases at the end of the quarter.  There will be four presentations on each topic by groups of four students.  As part of their preparation, these groups will read all of the student examples on their topic, evaluate them, and prepare summaries.

The best way I can describe the student work is to show you examples by linking  you to four pages concerning human fit.  The first one is an overview from one of the student groups on the concerns appearing in the student examples of good and bad human fit.  The second contains three examples considered to show good and bad human fit (students were limited to a paragraph on each example).  The third a list of products considered good  by the students of last year's class, and the fourth a list of the those displaying bad human fit by them.    I include last year's because I have not yet compiled the overall lists for the 2012 class.

Of course, I would expect different populations to submit different types of products.  Perhaps home owners would nominate more appliances, pieces of furniture, and yard equipment, and older people might have more concern for comfort and more difficulty in seeing tiny print from a distance and folding their bodies into small volumes.  And incidentally, we told last year's class not to include Apple products, and software of any sort, because they are so central to the life of students that they would have dominated the lists. Of course some of them disobeyed us.

The reason for these exercises is to cause the students to do some hard thinking about issues of quality—in particular to practice applying the material in the book and other readings, and that they have picked up by interacting with the lecturers.