Metric is King

Posted by stephens on Jul 31, 2009 in Engineering Decisions, Tips & Techniques | 0 comments

In October of 1991, I was part of a six-person task force that was given six months to revolutionize stamping die architectures for automotive tools. We had to scrap 75 years of history and re-invent how dies were designed and built. The goal? Save 30% of tooling costs. It took me four months to convince management that hard metric was the way forward. I had...

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Feasibility vs. Validation

Posted by stephens on Jul 30, 2009 in Engineering Decisions, Tips & Techniques | 2 comments

My dear friend Eric Kam does a great job conveying stamping simulation “geek speak” with his blog. There has been much talk recently in the industry and online about forming simulation feasibility versus validation. Reams of paper documents and terabytes of data have been generated by the PhD crowd about this topic. From the trenches, let me boil it...

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43

Posted by stephens on Jul 25, 2009 in About, Events | 0 comments

I wanted to share a project with you my son made in kindergarten this past May. I am on a business trip this weekend. So, for my 43rd birthday today, I am spending the day in my usual Groundhog Day solitude admiring the thoughful poster he made me. The actual size is 8.5 x 11 and is laminated. I guess he laminated it so my tears can wipe off without damaging...

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Slide 23

Posted by stephens on Jul 24, 2009 in Demos, Events | 0 comments

Dug Song posted a presentation that gives a great summary of the startup community in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I am intimately involved with the startup community in both Ann Arbor and Boulder, Colorado. Here is the link: http://www.annarborstartups.com/2009/07/23/ann-arbor-startup-community-report-h109/ For you 23 Enigma buffs, notice the day in the link as well...

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iPitch

Posted by stephens on Jul 23, 2009 in Demos, Events, Tips & Techniques | 0 comments

No one pitches better than Steve Jobs. No one. He owns it. Too often, I see pitches and presentations that are too detailed, too technical, and too boring. Some PowerPoint slides have so much text, they would not pass the Twitter 140 character limit test. One presentation by Steve Jobs that is particularly effective is the iPod Nano introduction. In a word:...

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