In this post we are focusing on how systems can reduce the amount of overhead required to deliver products and services.

I’ll do this by sharing how well designed systems has helped me in my career and greatly benefited my employers.  In the next blog, I’ll share where I got my systems training for the online world and talk about why I invested in The Elevated Course.

Systems are a part of me. It’s as if I create or search for problems just so I can coexist with systems. As a kid I was always rearranging my room. Before moving the heavy furniture around I would draw a scale version of my room 1”=1’ and then cut out paper outlines of all my furniture. I’ve carried this skill with me through out life. I’ve used digital versions and prepared versions from furniture companies like, West Elm’s Room Planner. BTW West Elm and Room & Board are two of my favorite furniture stores.

I have a tendency to collect things to. I’ve collected comic books, synthesizers, board games. Organizing my hobbies is just as fun and sometimes more fun than the hobbies themselves. 

Enter the career field. As a technician manufacturing electronic assemblies there were lots of opportunities for improvement. My throughput on the manufacturing floor was bar none. Like most entry level jobs I’ve found myself in I quickly fly through the rankings almost doubling my salary in a couple years and amazing lots of additional responsibilities. I took some trainings in 5s and Lean Manufacturing. Alongside a team I helped reduce the square footage required to produce products by 45%. We eliminated 3 positions while maintaining the same testing and production throughput. The three individuals were able to go work in other areas.

The guy teaching the 5s training was remarkable. He got his family onboard and implemented 5S at his house. 5s is basically the left brain version or Marie Kondo’s KonMari Method, only for manufacturing. Lean Manufacturing is all about reducing waste.  The 8th deadly waste is human potential. This results in lost motivation, creativity and valuable ideas.

Eliminating the waste of human potential is one of the reasons Manifestation Architect exists. I believe that money is energy and that companies extract human life force energy for profits. I believe there should be a quality in the extraction process. Additionally, if you setup you work environment and systems to support your employees and allow them to use their gifts naturally you can’t help but create additional value. This tends to fly in the face of modern business that is all about efficiency. But this is a scarcity mindset. Instead of reducing we should be asking what more can I get out of my business, my resources and my most valuable resource, human potential.

How did the new testing and manufacturing floor configuration work for me? I had a system for that. We put our test fixtures on carts. We designed what tests each cart supported by analyzing a matrix of volume of products tested vs equipment needed to test. This helped avoid bottle necks and maximized throughput. But I took it one step further. This configuration maximized use of physical resources. I learned to maximize time. I would setup my bench to test products with various test times. One tests was as fast as I could go. Another took 5 minutes run time, another 15-20 and then tests in the thermal chamber taking 4-8 hours. This way I could actively test 3-4 products at once.

Later as an electrical engineer I was always looking for ways to improve workflows. My favorite time in my career is when the division I was a part of went from producing one product in one process node to 4 different products spanning two process nodes. This all happened while the division grew from ~$250M annual revenue to $1B in a couple of years. And it happened while adding only a handful of additional employees. In the graph below you can see how the design of three different products has the potential to increase revenue but at the expense of more resources without the use of systems. We used systems to reduce the headcount needed. As one of the leads I utilized coaching skills to help people think differently and add their own individual value into the new frameworks we created.

The entire system was built on utilizing experts each having experiences of over a decade. You can’t scale experts overnight. A colleague and I defined a hardware abstraction layer which decoupled the software algorithms from the hardware controls. This enabled all sorts of things like unit testing and the division witnessed it’s first ever same day silicon turn on with no firmware changes. Before this we would spend months debugging the system in the lab. I should point out this was a port from a 28nm process into a 16nm process. The hardware abstraction layer also allowed an entire product leverage all of the development from a previous product. We went from an electrical link to an optical links. We said to management. Look all you have to do is go implement the hardware abstraction layers and you can leverage all the algorithms, tests and work flows from this other product. The product and program was struggling but with our approach they were able to get the product out of the pan and into the customers products in a couple of months with a single software guy working part time and one dedicated lab worker. 

If you ask my opinion systems are absolutely critical in any business. Wether you are working to produce semiconductor products at one of the most profitable companies in the S&P 500 or developing business in the online space systems, BTW I currently do both :), well designed systems  are the key to creating and sustaining high gross margin businesses. 

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