Why Good Designs Fail with Dianna Deeney

Manufacturing design collaboration is at its most powerful long before a drawing hits the shop floor. Yet many teams only discover misalignment when designs arrive in production and the problems start stacking up.

In this episode, we sit down with Dianna Deeney, quality and reliability engineer and founder of Deeney Enterprises, to explore how early conversations, simple tools and shared context can erase the friction between design and manufacturing.

Dianna explains how process thinking brings clarity to concept development, why manufacturing input matters sooner than most teams realise, and how cross functional habits can prevent costly rework later on.

This conversation covers:

• Why early design decisions shape manufacturing success
• How manufacturing input accelerates concept development
• Shop floor tools that instantly improve design clarity
• Flowcharts and FMEAs used the right way
• Why context beats assumptions in engineering discussions
• Small conversations that avoid big problems
• What AI still cannot replace in design collaboration
• One practical step to improve communication today

If you enjoy the episode, follow the show for more conversations from across the manufacturing world.

Connect with Dianna
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diannadeeney
Deeney Enterprises: https://deeneyenterprises.com/
Pierce the Design Fog: https://deeneyenterprises.com/pierce-the-design-fog/

Transcript

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Why The Floor Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Don't be afraid to walk away from your desk, go onto the manufacturing floor, and you'll start to understand how your decisions are affecting everything downstream because you are just one piece in a big lawn chain that makes things happen.

Martin Griffiths 0:23

Hey, welcome to another episode of Manufacturers Makes Rides. Today I'm joined by quality engineer Diana Dini, and we explored a challenge that quietly affects almost every manufacturing business, why design teams and production so often end up working in silos and what it actually takes to bring these worlds together. Diana shows how her early experience in manufacturing and quality revealed something surprising. The many of the tools used on the shop floor to solve problems can also transform how products are designed in the first place. So if you've ever seen a design thrown over the wall to production or watch manufacturing struggle with decisions made far upstream, then this conversation is for you. And stay right till the end where Diana shares a simple technique that teams can use immediately to break down those silos and improve collaboration between design and manufacturing teams. So right now let's get straight into my conversation with Diana Deaney. Hey Diana,

Silos Versus Real Co-Design

Martin Griffiths 1:25

nice to have you on the podcast today. How's your day going? How's your week going?

SPEAKER_00 1:29

It's been going well. I've been playing around with LLMs and AIs. It's it's been fun, but you know, just like everybody else. And also just keeping ahead of what's going on with industry and manufacturing. It's there's a lot of movie parts nowadays.

Martin Griffiths 1:45

Therese, so I'm sure we'll get into lots of that as we go through the conversation. I I'd like to start off though with a with a with a deep dive. We'll get into your background next. But if you were to describe design and production working well together, what does that look like to you?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Well, I'll define it a couple ways. One of what it's not, and then I'll paint like the blue sky picture. Definitely what it's not is like the silo effect where designers are in one building doing a bunch of things, and then the designs get shot off somewhere else or thrown over the wall, is a phrase that I like to use a lot. And the manufacturers are just kind of stuck trying to build this thing. The blue sky version is that design and manufacturing are working together to co-design the design for manufacturability, of course. But then there's there's also a lot of skills that the manufacturing people can bring to the design table because of their processing mindset, their process mindset, which I can talk more about. But more, it's a more collaborative approach to product design. Now I I like to go to conferences. I went to a IEEE conference for Society of Women Engineers, and I was talking to other people about these kind of challenges. And someone was working in, I think they were making submarines, Navy ships, and the design team was inside the Northeast, like inside inner Pennsylvania. But then, you know, the ships and everything are being built on the shore, like two or three hours away. And it was a big struggle to get the design team to go visit the manufacturing people. Well, why do we need to visit them? They just need to build what we make. But through some convincing, you got the design team to take a trip three hours to the shore to talk to the people that are manufacturing, and they got to actually walk through the spaces they were designing and talk with the manufacturing engineers and the people making the product. And they could see a lot better what their challenges were or why they were getting pushbacks on certain things, or they could immediately tweak their design. Oh, we could do this to make it a lot easier for you. So it's just a silo effect, a communication barrier, and it's really just getting to play in the same sandbox, talking about the same thing, because we all have the same goals, which is to create and design great products.

Martin Griffiths 4:22

Yeah, you've sold me on the blue sky thinking that that's uh that sounds good. I guess I just have a follow-up question then before we get into your background. Why do you think historically the silo effect has come up then? What why do you think in the past it has been, you know, separate departments and the thrown over the ball?

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Well, I think each department, they I mentioned that we all have the same goal and we and we do. It takes a team of people to design and manufacture a product so that somebody can use it. Without one or the other, it's not going to happen. And that that goes the same with sales and marketing. If if everybody is not on board or if we're missing a piece of that, things don't happen. And we want things to happen. It's very rewarding to have our designs make it to the marketplace. But there is a perceived linear process for design, right? You come up with an idea, then you design it, and then you make it, and then you ship it out the door. So I think that natural process kind of delineates people into their own lane. And then also those groups are held to different metrics. They're trying to meet certain particular goals, and they're not always the same. Design team has some metrics, and manufacturing has another, and sometimes they're set up to conflict with each other. So another part of breaking down those silos is recognizing not only what each one brings to the table for design, but then also what are some of those conflicting parameters and how can we break those down or or help support each other to do it rather than creating a solid friction point.

Martin Griffiths 6:05

Okay, brilliant. Well, I think we've got some interesting stuff to cover over the over the rest of this talk. But

Why Silos Keep Happening

Martin Griffiths 6:10

let's go back to the beginning, you know, of your career where you were figuring out what you wanted to do, what drew you towards manufacturing then?

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Aaron Ross Powell, I had a unique upbringing in that my dad is a journeyman tool and dye maker, inventor, and business owner, and he was an avid do-it-yourselfer. So my parents owned a tool and dye shop, plastic injection molding. It was small, so three injection molding machines, a full tool shop and everything. So I kind of grew up in that environment. So I in in high school, I was working on the shop floor, working on the machines, and I was helping dad in the drafting room, and I and I learned how to draft in high school. And I was just thinking about this before we started talking. My my dad had this, I'm gonna age myself here. My dad had this drafting book. It was 10 inches thick, and and it wasn't even bound. It was like, you know, sheets and and it was a big string through it, and you like flunk it on the table. So in high school, I was learning how to draft and design and engineer things from that. Now, grant you, I'm still barely in my 40s. So I'm not old, but this was before email existed.

Martin Griffiths 7:28

Um, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

So um just all those experiences and then deciding to go into engineering and really loving it and loving the internships and the experiences I had from from working, that's kind of how it all started.

Martin Griffiths 7:41

So I could imagine getting so involved in that in your in your teens, it could either send you one way down that path because you love it, or it could put you off for for life potentially.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Yeah, like I don't want to do this because yeah, I don't like it, right?

Martin Griffiths 7:57

So what was it that you think, you know, sparked sparked your interest?

SPEAKER_00 8:02

I think it was the combination of the math and the applied sciences and the the ability to understand how things are made or to break down and build new things. And there's also a sense of independence that comes with engineering too. Because you know all the inner workings of all that. So that was that was interesting.

From Tool Shop To Engineering

SPEAKER_00 8:29

But then in my in my career, I'm working and I got invited to participate in a highly technical project, a heart pump. And that's where I found quality and reliability engineering. Because they they didn't used to have a college degree for quality and reliability. It's something you're exposed to after you've been working. And usually it's a like a group off in the corner somewhere, and then they come out once in a while and cause problems and disappear again. But with his project and with it being so advanced and so critical for safety and quality and reliability, I got to work with some really amazing people who ended up being some mentors for me. And that's how I got introduced to quality and reliability engineering. And I just kind of stayed there and stayed, stayed in that track.

Martin Griffiths 9:22

Okay. So thinking back to that project end, yeah, it sounds really kind of interesting and it would like open up possibilities at that at that age. What was it, do you think, about that, that changed your view on work or engineering?

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Well, I I joined the group as a process engineer because that's that's what my job had been, and I still really enjoy that. But then I saw the quality engineering aspect of process engineering, where it's sort of linking everything all together. It's it's looking across design and manufacturing and supplier relationships. So you're looking at the big picture and and trying to help people communicate and make sure that all the dominoes line up, so to speak. And so I like that aspect of it. And and I also liked, I guess it's coming back again to the math. I also like the mathematics of the reliability engineering. So all of those things were just made quality engineering appealing. I loved process engineering. I still, I still do. I love going to the manufacturing shows and and and how things are made and process engineering. But for me, I guess quality engineering was the natural next step.

Quality And Reliability Change The View

Martin Griffiths 10:36

Yeah, I was just thinking back to kind of my background. I I had a similar kind of background. I did engineering at university, did some process engineering. I actually, but I didn't have so much of the experience as when I was younger. I actually looking back, if I'd known, well, I found the math like tortuous, to be honest, when I was doing it at university. But I think the main issue was I didn't really see the point of it. I didn't see like the practical application of it. I think when you see the practical application of it, for some people it can be, you know, it can be really helpful to see why you would need to do these derivations or integrations or, you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Yeah, one of my mentors, and this was a lesson that it was sort of an aha moment, where I was looking at hypothesis tests and we're running DOEs and and trying to see, you know, what what factors are are a problem or or not, what should we focus on? And there were other verification validation tests. We were doing hypothesis tests against the standard, that kind of thing. This is medical device, so there's a lot of that kind of testing. But, you know, I I got to I got to a result, and I went to my one of the more senior people. I'm like, you know, this is saying this is statistically relevant, but you know, I'm not sure how it fits with the project. And he said, well, okay, it's statistically relevant, but practically it's not relevant because where your results are are so high above the standard that we need to meet that it doesn't matter. All right. So a lot of people can get stuck into the weeds of, you know, oh, is it statistically significant, you know, and drawing conclusions, but you you still have to take a step back and look at reality and the practical application of it, which is also, I don't know, it it's a fun thing to do, I think.

Martin Griffiths 12:30

So

A Cross-Functional Meeting That Worked

Martin Griffiths 12:31

thinking about then going back to where we started the conversation off on the handover, you know, either the handing throwing over the wall from design to manufacturing or the more integrated method of working together. When did that come to your attention? You know, were were you and what were you working on where you realized that might be an issue or not the best way to work?

SPEAKER_00 12:54

There was a product that was already in the market, but we had to revisit it for some reason. Something had changed, a standard had changed, and and I think it my memory recalls it has something to do with the instructions. We had to touch the instructions and improve them. And it was a matter of, you know, there there was a few dribbles coming in from, you know, the field, there was a little bit from the design engineers and the manufacturer. So I said, let's let's just collaborate, let's let's hold a meeting. So I facilitated a cross-functional meeting with them about this. And I used a flowchart analysis and and a risk management methods, like failure mode methods. And just getting everybody in the same room to talk about this one product for this customer base, what they're seeing in the field, why decided decisions were made, problems manufacturing was having, and everybody coming together to work on those common tools that that process flow chart for the use process and then risk management methods. There were a lot of aha moments going on in that meeting because the field techs didn't realize why design made that decision. And design didn't know that manufacturing was always having these kind of problems. So there was a lot of synergy going on and ideas for what to do to make it better.

Martin Griffiths 14:22

Yeah, that was kind of a fortuitous thing to come about, wasn't it? And to see that. So what happened? So how did that affect you and your thoughts and how you approach things afterwards then?

SPEAKER_00 14:32

You know, looking back, starting as a process engineer in manufacturing and on the floor, you really learn what a process is and how to analyze it. And then there's also a lot of continuous improvement because in manufacturing, you're trying to make things better, increase the throughput, reduce the defects. So there's a lot of process engineering, manufacturing engineering work that you can do that's that you can directly see is applicable to your job, like what you're doing. It's when I had the opportunity to work as a quality engineer and sit in on the design team end of it, where I got to think, you know, maybe I should start applying what I learned in manufacturing to the design process and and how teams are working to design things together. So the if you think about the products that we make, they're really just a system. It's a black box system when we don't know what it is yet. But we have our customers coming to it. They they want to use our product for some reason or another. They are picking up or buying a product to be able to solve a problem. They do something with it, so they're interacting with and using our product in a process. And then when our product works works well, our customers experience a benefit to that. And when it doesn't work well, they complain and they don't like that. It's a bad experience. So thinking about our product as a system in relation to our customers' experiences with that, in doing that, we can apply a lot of the process and manufacturing thought processes to design, bringing up further into the design process.

Martin Griffiths 16:15

Yeah,

Bring Shop-Floor Tools Into Design

Martin Griffiths 16:16

that that yeah, that makes sense. That's a nice way of looking at it. How do you bring the team with you then? How do you, you know, if if you if your starting point is a manufacturing and a design team that are quite siloed, then well what do you think is the first step, you know, for making that closer collaboration happen?

SPEAKER_00 16:36

I think it's a matter of being in the right place at the right time. And that's not by luck, that's by design. So if I if I were in a company that designed and manufactured products, and I was the process engineer and I was assigned to a new product development project, I would want to be in as many conversations as possible at the beginning, not just those status meetings where everybody's, oh, what are you working on? How are you doing that? And not just sitting present to interject what problems manufacturing could have, but almost as a as a servant. So you you know as a process engineer in manufacturing, you you know some of the tools, techniques that you could use. Could you use them and apply that to the use process to help your team better understand the customer? Or if they're getting stuck on a particular aspect of this this concept, how can you help them break it down further to better understand how it affects the customer? What what's critical to quality about it, what's value added or not? So instead of just focusing on your goals and aspirations, actually trying to bring your skills of what you learn to be able to help the design team and be part of the design.

Martin Griffiths 17:58

Yeah, that makes that makes sense. So I I imagine like maybe so if there's a if there's a change in in process, like sometimes people are can be a little bit resistant to change. So if someone out there, an engineer is in that situation, wants to do this, they might have to like sell the change slightly, either to their boss, to the team, maybe. What do you think some of the benefits of this are that could help help someone sell that that process change?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Yeah, I can see that as and needing to sell an idea to try something. Some of it has to do with banking your goodwill with the rest of the team. So if if you know John and Mary are on the design side and you're going to be working with them for this project, try to get to know them a little bit better. So, so just personal-wise, try to invite them to coffee or ask them more about their work, try to develop a relationship with the rest of the people on the team first. But then in lieu of that, you can just approach it as a question. Like, I I have this idea. It will take this long. Maybe it'll take us 30 minutes to have a discussion. Would you like to try it? And this is what I think that will get out of it. And usually people are really responsive to that, especially if they're stuck.

Martin Griffiths 19:21

So what do you think are like the main benefits that that come out that would come out of that conversation? Or sorry, of doing this process?

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Aaron Powell Well, it it depends on the on the problem, right? So in in early design, if they're struggling with how is a customer going to be able to do this, then that's where you can step in. You know, this sounds like a process. I I know processes really well. How about we map this out in a flow chart? Because some some people in the design team, just last year I was working with a design engineer, hadn't used process flow charts in a really long time. We're like, hey, I kind of recognize that. I don't remember what that's like. Yeah. So it can be really simple like that. Or, you know, as you get to know them and the problems become more complex, maybe you could approach them with something more complicated like the matrix diagram. But simple tools like flowcharts, tree diagrams, and just working on the process can be really helpful for teams.

Martin Griffiths 20:22

Okay, got you. So yeah, so you're thinking of this like beyond at multiple different levels. There's a level of the design for manufacturer as it, you know, change the radius of this corner because it's easier for us to manufacture. But you're also thinking it on the level of the of input into the actual design process as well and iterating using the process improvement skills and the continuous improvement skills to iterate on a better design process uh over time.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Yes. Yes.

Martin Griffiths 20:54

Yeah. So would you consider using, say, like lean and kaizen techniques and always on that process as well, or is that taking things too far?

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Oh no, yeah. If it fits and the team is is willing to explore it.

Martin Griffiths 21:08

It's open. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Yeah. Usually there's a problem to be solved and they're not sure how to move forward. And that's where you can identify, you know, how does this relate to something that I did in manufacturing as a quality engineer, a manufacturing engineer? And if it kind of does, you know, what what did you do to solve it? Can you apply that, you know, lead your team through that to help them decide? There was um a validation failure on on a product design, and they were having trouble coming up with root cause. So one of the things we did was a fishbone diagram with four manufacturing engineers. It's a really common thing to be able to do, but it's not so common with design.

Martin Griffiths 21:51

Yeah. So bringing some of them techniques to the party, and I guess, yeah, that helps bring the collaboration a bit closer and that it Just it can compound, I guess, over time.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Yeah. And you know, I know there are quality-based design systems. There's design for Six Sigma, there's quality function deployment, and those are fine, but usually companies have their own design process depending on what they're making, you know. So this is more of a plug-and-play approach for quality during design. It's it doesn't it's not interfering with the design process or the design control, so it's a little more accessible. It's also people first and problem first, but it's a matter of just transferring those skills that you learned into a new area, and that's ultimately going to make a better product for your customers and improve your manufacturability of your product because you're having a say at the design table.

Martin Griffiths 22:56

Do you think

Getting Time And Buy-In

Martin Griffiths 22:57

this leads like high-up kind of leadership buy-in to do this? Because I could so maybe we're talking slightly blue sky thinking here, but I because I can imagine either some companies that I've worked at in the past where I was a process engineer, or some people that I know at the moment who are in process engineering, and they can sometimes be a little bit overwhelmed with the process improvement challenges to keep the production going day to day at the moment. So I can see what you're suggesting is like a you know a valuable investment of time that will give payback at some point in the future, but it may not give immediate payback. Soon you know, for processor or quality engineers to spend time in a design project, it may take, you know, a year, a few years maybe to pay back that benefit. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 23:54

So there's there's a couple things. You're right. In a lot of the companies that I work with, there is a manufacturing engineer assigned as part of the product development team. But their usual their usual case is to look for design for manufacturability, manufacturability, feasibility, that kind of thing. If that's not the case, and say you become friends with the design person and they're having this problem and you think, you know, I I know this tool can work. That might that might be an approach that you may have to talk with your manager to get approval to work with them for an afternoon. But it's also a matter of not just facilitating and doing it for them, but but showing them some of your skills can be applied for them. And then maybe they can take it from there. But yeah, getting getting approval from your managers on and taking the time to be able to do that might be just something that you need to address. Yeah.

Martin Griffiths 24:52

Okay, yeah. But you the other alternative is it could be a conversation, it could be planting an idea and planting the seed for someone to, you know, spend some time, you know, to to to start thinking about that those techniques themselves.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Yeah, that there that there is an answer or there there is a way to figure it out with a group of people, and that you might you might have the answer and you might be able to help them with that.

Martin Griffiths 25:16

Got ya. Okay. This is this is good, thank you. I'd like to change that slightly.

Myths And Truths On Collaboration

Martin Griffiths 25:21

We have a section called Myths and Truths. I'm gonna throw out some statements there. Let me know if you think it's a myth or a truth. Manufacturing constraints limit creativity in the design process.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

I think that is a myth. But the reason I think it's a myth is because when you when you are design you So there's creativity and then there's design and innovation. So in creativity, you know, I I don't like to think of it like the answer's out there somewhere. I like Drew Boyd's and inside the box thinking. But constraints in manufacturing are a reality that need to be designed for. So creativity, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Sometimes there's an answer, but you definitely have to answer to that when you get to manufacturing.

Martin Griffiths 26:16

Perfect. Quality is mainly about meeting specifications.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

No, quality is a mindset.

Martin Griffiths 26:24

Oh, okay. Yeah, tell tell me more.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

So this is a little bit beyond quality is everybody's job. Everybody should be doing it. Which okay, sure. True. But quality is also sort of at the we talked about the product development and process level where quality engineering is looking across the space. How do things interact and and meet up to be able to deliver a quality product? And how does the customer see quality? Well, it's the same with as a business level. At the business level, I feel there should be quality management who is looking across the business in a similar way to ensure that the quality management system or the business systems are communicating in a well that they are presenting data and information and people are able to make better business decisions from that. So I think quality is a mindset because of that those reasons.

Martin Griffiths 27:24

Production teams often spot uh practical risks uh before the draw-ins are finalized.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

I think that's true. I think manufacturing should definitely look at the design before it's finalized, because they can have input into what's going to work and what's not. You know, like we were talking about just at the beginning, the engineers going to the shore to walk through the submarine, they got a lot of ideas. And as that's the kind of valuable information that the manufacturing and production team can can provide.

Martin Griffiths 28:00

Clear roles in discussions improve the decision quality.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

That is true. Especially, you know, I've talked about working as a team together and in getting better realization of, you know, the team got together and they're like, oh, I understand now what the problems you were having. Even before that, the team has to understand how decisions are going to be made coming out of that meeting. So there might be a lot of ideas generated, but then the project manager is like, ah, but I'm going to pick this one. So if the team didn't understand ahead of time that they're working and coming up with ideas and they thought they were all going to be implemented, it would just be a total emotional drain, vacuum. It'd be it'd be really balloon buster, right?

Martin Griffiths 28:48

Um Yeah, it's not gonna lead to motivated people for the next project.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Yeah, no. But but if everybody understands ahead of time, okay, we're gonna come up with these ideas and make a recommendation, and the PM's gonna make the decision, it goes a lot smoother. So yeah, you definitely needed to find that ahead of time.

Martin Griffiths 29:07

Okay, that's good advice. That's good advice. All right, thank you for that. Would you like to

Pierce The Design Fog And AI Limits

Martin Griffiths 29:11

talk about what you're working on now and the future, really? So looking ahead, what feels like the most important part of what you're working on now?

SPEAKER_00 29:21

Well, I I published a book, Pierce the Design Fog, and is it was really a way to help guide people on how to apply quality thinking to a design process, like really early, like early concept development. And it pulls a lot of those quality tools and techniques into the front and shows people a way that they could do it. So that's been my my current project that I've been working on is helping people know how to apply these techniques to concept development and early development. And I get asked the question, you know, you promote cross-functional teamwork with sales and manufacturing and design, but can I just use an AI for that, an AI agent? And I don't I should ask. I'm going to start asking. I don't know if it's because of a curiosity with the technology, or if it's a reluctance to work with other people on the team, or maybe there's an absence of a representative where people work.

Martin Griffiths 30:27

Okay. So is that I I I didn't totally understand that question to begin with, but I think it does the question mean could I basically use AI as a person from if I'm in as a manufacturing person, you mean as a manufacturing viewpoint?

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Yes. Yeah. Can I can I use an AI agent to represent the manufacturing person on my team? And to which I say, you know, a AIs are great at disseminating information or recognizing new patterns, but they miss a lot of the context of the problem that you're trying to work on. So even if your marketing manager did this great marketing feasibility study in a report, you could upload that report as a knowledge base for your AI and ask a few questions, but I don't think it's a substitute for actually working with your marketing representative because of the context that they bring. And then also just some of the unknown limitations with LLMs.

Martin Griffiths 31:33

So tell me a bit more about the about the book, Pierce of Design Fog. What led you to what inspired you to write it?

SPEAKER_00 31:41

It was really um like what we've been talking about today. And it became a passion project. It was a matter of I was trying to think how could I capture some of my experiences as a quality engineer, reliability engineer with a design team in a way that could help other people do the same things that I've been doing in my career. Because, like I said, it's not a complete overhaul of any design process. It's not interjecting at the wrong time. It's just a matter of getting people to talk together when things are not so clear. Between in really the niche focus of what I promote for Pierce the Design Fog is that space between, hey, we have an idea and we've approved a project, to, hey, this is the design inputs and this is what we're designing. We have a CAD drawing. It's that uncomfortable space in between where people don't know what to ask. They don't know how to talk to each other. They're sharing reports, but information isn't really getting shared. So just like my story when I brought people together to talk about this new instruction booklet, the Pierce the Design Fog uses targeted templates and tools to get the team to talk together about a concept toward engineering inputs. And it's prioritized based on the customer experiences. How much do they love it, how much do they hate it, and what are some of the problems they have in using it.

Martin Griffiths 33:12

Who did you have in mind? You know, who were you writing it for? And who do you have in mind to, you know, benefit or learn from it?

SPEAKER_00 33:21

I really had in mind the design engineers. It could also be the quality people that want to get involved more in design. And I think the manufacturing engineers will recognize a lot of the methods in there too. But it's just applied to early concept design. I saw this space between innovation, creativity, and design. That's that intersection that really wasn't being addressed or helping people through that in a in a productive way. So that's that's the intersection that I'm trying to help people work through.

Martin Griffiths 33:58

Well, good luck with that. Wish you the best success for that. Is it out now or is that thank you.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Yes, it is out. You can learn all about it at PierceThedesignfog.com.

Martin Griffiths 34:09

Perfect. That sounds sounds like a really good, really interesting read.

Manufacturing Tech Shifts Worth Watching

Martin Griffiths 34:14

Just thinking more widely, are there any shifts you would like to see in the in the manufacturing or across the engineering and design industry in the future?

SPEAKER_00 34:24

There are so many people shifting things already that I'm more watching what's happening or what's going to happen.

Martin Griffiths 34:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:35

So uh you know, I went to a trade show in the fall, and there were people that were doing amazing things with vision systems using AI to be able to quickly measure things, and then the robots picking and placing what's good or bad. So there's a a lot of those new integrations going on that just seem to make sense. And yeah, so vision systems, AI, laser measurement, a lot of end-of-line and in-process things going on. I know one of the sensor companies also developed an LLM interface so that engineers can see what's happening with this line, and the AI will kind of evaluate all the data and try to make correlations for them. And then they can even use that interface to reprogram the PLCs. So a lot of interesting things going on in industry, and I'm I'm here to watch everything that's happening with it.

Martin Griffiths 35:37

Yeah. Okay, with with interest, yeah.

Walk The Floor And Build Trust

Martin Griffiths 35:40

How about, you know, what would you like, or what do you hope younger design engineers who are coming through, you know, maybe starting their first role, you know, in over the next few years, what would you like their focus to be, or what would you like their experience to be over the course of their careers?

SPEAKER_00 36:00

This would be design engineers or manufacturing engineers. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Design engineers.

Martin Griffiths 36:04

Design engineers, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

It is a good idea to become friends with the process engineers and actually walk the production floor. And don't be afraid to walk away from your desk, into the test lab, go onto the manufacturing floor, talk with people, and just get out there into the rest of the business. And you'll start to understand how your decisions are affecting everything downstream from that decision. So I guess it's also from a sense of uh approaching it from curiosity, but then also a little bit of humility because you are just one piece in a big long chain that makes things happen. And the better each link performs their function and and mates up with the next one, the more success that you'll have as an engineer.

Martin Griffiths 36:55

Perfect. Thank you. That's that's really helpful. I have one question that I'd like to to to leave with at the end. Just before we come to that, though, it's been really interesting. Thank you. Um good. Thank you, Diana. What's the best way people can find out more about you?

SPEAKER_00 37:11

You know, I would um I would say contact me on on LinkedIn. Um I'm active there. That's that's an accessible way. And then and then I have links to everything else that where I am. I I have YouTube videos, I have Udemy courses, I have the book, and then I also have other free learning resources on my website. So if you visit me on LinkedIn and and click my links, you'll get to everything, including my contact information.

Martin Griffiths 37:40

All the information's uh perfect. That's great. We'll we'll pop links to that in the show description. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. So if you're enjoying this episode, please give us a follow on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That would help us to keep bringing authentic manufacturing conversations with the people who are shaping our industry. Thank you. I like to kind of end with a final takeaway that people could maybe use in the in their day-to-day work going forward. So if someone's working in a company and they think there's room for improvement of the communication between design and manufacturing, what do you think one thing that they could do today to get that sort of to start improving that communication?

SPEAKER_00 38:25

I think I'm going to I I know it's might be hard to hear, but I think I'm going to go back to the try to get to know the other people that are making decisions along the product line. Sometimes it's it's just showing interest in what they're doing, like, hey, what are you working on nowadays? Can we have lunch sometime? How about a coffee? Or hey, I I heard that you're designing the next version of this. Why don't you come take a look at what we're doing on the manufacturing floor and kind of start to develop that relationship one-on-one? I know culture within a company can be really hard to change. And when you're working, you know, on the floor as a manufacturing engineer, really the the best place to start is with those relationships, building relationships for better work conversations.

Martin Griffiths 39:20

Yeah. So you don't have to make a big kind of structural change, but yeah, getting those personal one-on-one connections is uh is a is a good starting point. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

Yeah, absolutely.

Martin Griffiths 39:30

Yeah, perfect. Thank you, Diana. Yeah, it's been been really interesting, really uh insightful. Re really appreciate your time today.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

Oh, it was fun talking with you. Thank you.