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Best Practices

Toyota

One conclusion increasingly drawn from Toyota’s system is that many U.S. manufacturers have gone off track with their own development efforts. In fact, some of the processes they’ve adopted in the name of speed and quality have actually had the opposite effect.

The 3832 Action-Assist slide helps users open and close drawers with ease.

Applying everyday principles to product development can reduce hazards and increase patient safety

WCBF’s Lean Six Sigma Summit will be held in Chicago, focusing on maximizing quality, minimizing waste, and achieving cost savings.

The annual Shingo Prize Annual Conference will be held in Nashville, Tenn., highlighting lean processes, Kaizen, and more.

Iver E. Anderson has spent 26 years in engineering, and says his best career decision was taking the advice of colleague Fred Yost from Sandia Labs. That advice: To work together on developing a lead-free solder.

Warmth is an important sensory attribute in product design and a subtle but integral part of branding.

Perhaps as much as any discipline, engineering has undergone radical changes in the last century. Design for Costing (DFC) is an example of an extremely effective but underappreciated engineering development.

BMW Group DesignworksUSA took two years to develop a high-end espresso machine

Keep a time log for a day or two. You’ll need a timer that alerts you every so often

Kevin Ryan, rehabilitation engineer, talks about why high-school kids are smarter than college students and helping people with disabilities.

While a “breadboard” design may be workable, it may not be possible to actually making standard components fit the required envelope.

Getting a grip on the math behind CAD will help you design visually appealing products.  Understanding mathematical concepts and how they apply to CAD can help you design products with a visual appeal that, although difficult to describe, evokes an emotional response that is impossible to deny.

Industrial designers focus on free thinking. Engineers tend to focus on analytics. The two viewpoints make for diverse approaches to product design. Yet both are crucial to the development of sustainable, high-quality products.

Patenting demands significant time and typically costs more than maintaining trade secrets. But trade secrets aren’t free. While there are no governmental fees or formal filing processes, there typically are internal costs associated with properly maintaining a trade secret.