Survivor: Engineering

ENGINEERING

How to Outwit, Outplay, and Outlast in Your Career

About Us • Shawn Riley – BME 1998, MSME 2001 – Enjoyed years of fluids and biomechanics research at UD. – Has since worked in silicon based industries (solar energy, and semiconductor polishing materials). – Currently, a Product Engineer with Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials.

• Dina Riley – BME 1998, MBA 2003 – After undergraduate studies, went to work for HewlettPackard as a Commodity Manager. – Currently, a Procurement Operating Manager with Agilent Technologies, responsible for 12 direct reports managing the inbound supply chain throughout the US, Germany, Japan, and China.

Why Survivor? • Starting a career can feel much like a trip to a foreign island… To survive, you’ll need: – New tools and skills – Ability to form alliances – Leadership qualities

ENGINEERING

You’re on the Island – Now What? • The first objectives any contestant on Survivor addresses are the basic human needs: start a fire, build a shelter, find potable water • The transition to a career relies on things that you have already learned, but you need to be open to new experiences and continuously develop new skills, such as: – Zero Based Design / DFx – Root Cause Analysis – Six Sigma ENGINEERING

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Six Sigma • What is Six Sigma? – If you said “Process control producing less than 3.4 DPMO”, you are technically correct but may be missing the point. – Six Sigma is more than statistics – it’s a whole new tool box that builds upon your college-learned skills to help Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control, and Sustain (DMAICS). • • • • • • ENGINEERING

Gage Repeatability & Reproducibility Control Charts Data Analysis Process Maps Cause & Effect Matrices Failure Mode and Effects Analysis Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Process Mapping • Identifies Key Process Input and Output Variables (KPIV / KPOV) Input

Process Step

Coffee Beans Type of Roast Type of Grind

Select Coffee

Amount of Coffee Filter Type Type of Water

Load Machine

Brew Cycle Time Brew Temperature

ENGINEERING

Brew Coffee

Output

Coffee selected and prepared

Machine loaded

The "Perfect Cup"

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Cause and Effect Matrix (C&E) • Ranks the impact of KPIV’s against the customer critical KPOV’s. • Allows prioritization and provides justification. Rating of Importance to Customer

1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9

ENGINEERING

Process Step

Process Input

Select Coffee Select Coffee Select Coffee Load Machine Load Machine Load Machine Brew Coffee Brew Coffee

Coffee Beans Type of Roast Type of Grind Amount of Coffee Filter Type Type of Water Brew Cycle Time Brew Cycle Temp.

10

6

8

Coffee Flavor 9 9 9 9 3 9 9 9

Coffee Temperature 1 0 1 3 0 0 3 9

Wait time for Brewing 0 0 3 3 1 0 9 3

Totals 96 90 120 132 38 90 180 168

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) • Further refines C&E findings with Occurrence / Severity / Detection. • Clear action plans for reducing the risks in any process or transaction. Process Step / Input Potential Failure Mode Potential Failure Effects S E What is the process In what ways does the What is the impact on the V step and Input under Key Input go wrong? Key Output Variables E investigation? (Customer R Requirements)? I T Y

Brew Cycle Time

Too much coffee in filter

Water Overflows

Brew Cycle Time

Cycle Time too long

Frustrated customer

ENGINEERING

7

Potential Causes What causes the Key Input to go wrong?

No measurement for coffee

10 Calicification in machine

O C C U R R E N C E

Current Controls What are the existing controls and procedures (inspection and test) that prevent either the cause or the Failure Mode?

Coffee measured with bare 10 hands and packed tightly into filter 6

Annual decalcification

Actions D Recommended E T What are the E actions for C RPN reducing the T occurrence of the I cause, or O improving N detection? 7

490

Buy measuring spoons

4

240

Change frequency to monthly

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Six Sigma = The Funneling Effect • The 6 tools allow you to quickly reduce a pile of hundreds of variables down to the critical few that require more investigation but have a high likelihood of impacting customer key variables. • Can even be applied to transactional tasks.

ENGINEERING

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Skills Summary • Six Sigma is one of many tools that you may learn during your career, but like other tools, it can serve to make reaching a solution clearer or quicker. • When you hear of something new – go look into it, ask questions, find people who know about it. • Training is often seen as a reward and a sign that the organization is willing to invest in you. Take advantage of it, have realistic expectations, and apply your learnings.

ENGINEERING

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Forming Your Alliances • One of the key successes to any Survivor contestant is knowing how to “read” people and interact with them • The workplace is no different and successfully networking with the right people will help catapult your success

ENGINEERING

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Working within an Alliance • Communication is key in order to work effectively with other people • Most business communication can be done via e-mail or IM, but sometimes it is critical to have all of the stakeholders in a room face-toface with one another

ENGINEERING

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Making Meetings Effective (Even with Difficult People)

• Chances are, you will be attending a number of meetings throughout your career – but don’t forget each meeting comes at a price ($15M worth annually in some cases)

ENGINEERING

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Secret to Effective Meetings Improved Dialogue

Better Decisions

Effective Actions

Better Results!

• Follow the 40/20/40 rule: Meeting Preparation (Invitees, Agenda)

ENGINEERING

Conduct Meeting

Meeting Summary / Execution

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Meeting Preparation (Invitees, Agenda)

• Get the right people. – Who cares? Determine who is impacted. – Who knows? Determine who has the expertise. – Who must agree? Determine how agreement will be reached. – How many people is it worth involving? Keep it lean and mean to avoid side conversations and opinions.

ENGINEERING

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Conduct Meeting

• Keep people on track. – What are we discussing? Create an agenda and stick to it. – Who will be attending? Tailor your message to the audience. – Who is listening? Actively listen and take notes. – Who is not listening? Squash side conversations. – What’s the bottom line? Start with your last slide.

ENGINEERING

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Meeting Summary / Execution

• Now take action! – Who? Assign tasks to specific people. There is no such thing as group accountability. – Does What? Spell out the deliverables. The fuzzier the expectations, the higher the likelihood of a missed goal. – By When? Assignments without deadlines create guilt but not action. – Follow Up: There is no accountability if there is not an opportunity to account for action. ENGINEERING

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Alliances Summary • Being able to communicate and hold effective meetings is a key to building strong working ties and organizational credibility. • Build a reputation for keeping meetings to the point, making clear decisions, and executing the actions to closure, and you’ll find many people who will be looking to work on your project teams. ENGINEERING

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Be the Tribe Leader • Chances are, you will be placed with a team of people you don’t know and you will be expected to deliver results – no matter what • Mastering a few important skills will allow you to build rapport quickly: – Understand how people behave – Learn how to influence – Continuously build credibility • If you aspire to be a manager, you need to learn how to lead people • Even if you want to remain an individual contributor, you still need to demonstrate leadership capabilities ENGINEERING

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

So What Does It Take? • Situational Leadership® II is based on the principle that there is no best leadership style • Effective leadership occurs when the appropriate leadership style is matched to an individual’s development level on a specific goal or task

ENGINEERING

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Leading Your Tribe • There are 2 basic leadership style behaviors: – Directive Behavior • Telling and showing people what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and providing frequent feedback

– Supportive Behavior • Listening, encouraging, praising, and involving others in decision making

• Understanding how to integrate and apply these behaviors will make you a great leader ENGINEERING

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Choosing the Appropriate Leadership Style

High

Supportive Behavior Low Low ENGINEERING

Directive Behavior

High

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Leadership Summary • There are many effective leadership models, but the key to getting things done in any organization requires the ability to: – Motivate – Influence – Lead

ENGINEERING

Skills – Alliances – Leadership

Keeping Your Torch Lit • For any career goal, you should have a sense of: – Direction: a view of the long-term position you hope to create – Discovery: an understanding of how to differentiate yourself and keep your skills fresh – Destiny: the emotional edge and passion for winning

ENGINEERING

Winning the Reward Challenges • To get to the top tier, you need to put your time in at the bottom. • Don’t think your path to organizational success is a clear, obvious, and straight path – most organizations want to see both breadth and depth. ENGINEERING

Closing Thoughts 1.

Get the job done – if you can’t do this, don’t worry about the rest.  

2.

Consistently get results Meet commitments

Make people happy that you are on the team.  

3.

Work for others’ success Build relationships

Prioritize 

ENGINEERING

You can’t do everything, but you have to get the critical few things done well.

Closing Thoughts 4.

Continuously learn and network  

5.

New experiences, skills, work processes, outside resources, coworkers, bosses, business units, etc. Get feedback on your impact and performance

Drive and embrace change 

6.

Look for opportunities to improve the process and your organization

Have fun!

Use these tools and you will manage to Outwit, Outplay, and Outlast throughout your entire engineering career!

ENGINEERING

Questions?

ENGINEERING