S5E44 Geoff Gaw | Nitinol, R&D, and How to Learn About New Technologies

do you want to automate but don't have time to develop the skill set try our Easy Motion hardware and software bundle it's like t-slot extrusions for automation programming the functional elements are already built for you all you need to do is connect them together to create fast easy and endlessly customizable motion Solutions learn more at Team pipeline. us and then also just asking for help when I needed it being able to set aside your pride and saying hey you know what this is a little much right now like is there kind of some temporary relief uh that I could get from you know either my respective leaders or other other leaders in the group [Music] [Applause] hello and welcome to the being an engineer podcast Our Guest today is Jeff Gau an experienced mechanical engineer specializing in the medical device industry with a degree in mechanical engineering and minors in Material Science and Energy Engineering from calply Pomona he has held technical roles at Edwards life sciences metatronic and applied medical his expertise spans project management product and process development and Manufacturing support he's overseen the development of complex medical devices scaling teams and driving operational excellence from early development stages to mass production currently he serves as a senior principal engineer at Edwards Life Sciences Jeff thank you so much for being with us today yeah thanks for having me Erin I appreciate it listen to a couple episodes um so yeah looking I mean looking forward to helping the your fans and and hopefully we could um you know Inspire some people out there I I I think my fans are limited to maybe my my mother-in-law and my sister or something like that but there are some some people who listen to to the show anyway and we we are trying to build a repository of engineering insight and and wisdom and knowledge so thank you so much for being willing to contribute it to to that repository and and help the engineering community at large yeah definitely of course Okay so first question what made you decide to become an engineer yeah uh let's see so honestly like you don't at least for me the way I grew up you know I didn't really have an idea of what engineering was um and I really didn't know too much about it until you know until it was time to basically declare for a major um which you know might be a little late for most people uh or I don't know maybe it's a little too early now there was a big push from my family to like basically make me go into nursing um Health Care in some way and you know that really wasn't like my thing my thing was or I kind of um floated the idea of like business and marketing um but that was not a that wasn't so popular uh within uh a typical Asian household um so I kind of just had to do some research uh between math or science and and that's kind of how I found engineering as a field and I selected mechanical engineering because I read up that you know you're looking at like a jack of all traits master of none so I kind of like that flexibility in my head but really I think you know like going into the main pretty undecided and unsure the the I guess event that really cemented it for me was as corny as it is as it sounds is you know basically the first Iron Man movie um that actually came out in uh May 2008 which is when I was graduating um so that gave me I mean just seeing the movie and then like realizing obviously it's like a fictitious kind of level of possibilities um you know like that was inspiring I got inspired um and it felt it felt more it felt better going into the major and and the studies that I'm gonna you know be looking forward to in the future that's really cool I remember watching that movie and also uh loving the engineering aspect of it right Tony Stark and Jarvis and like their little product development lab down to the basement uh it's always funny as an engineer watching movies like that you know of course it's a movie right so you kind of expect some of this um in like a day he he uh makes these huge changes right in technological advancements in his suit and and Jarvis is doing his thing and and you sit back and you realize Ah that's probably like two years of work right there that they just did it yeah in a day and a half yeah yeah yeah no I I totally agree with you I think the um it's you know it's definitely an ambitious version of of what um our industry is but uh I I I just like the possibility like to me that's kind of what was like a inspiring is like yes that's like two three maybe five years of work but you know it's something that uh that that is possible so yeah yep absolutely and it probably wouldn't have been nearly as interesting of film if if we had to watch two years of Tony Stark developing things yeah years good call by the trying to escape a a cave in the in the mountains yeah right right yeah all right well you have some expertise working with Metals in in medical devices specifically what uh what have been some unique um processes involving medals or or maybe some unique challenges that you've run into specifically in the context of of metals yeah yeah uh well so I have like total appreciation for um all the intricacies that go into Metal Manufacturing uh you know prior to my current role at Edwards uh what I found the most interesting at the time was metal injection molding uh you know that was uh mean when I got exposed to it was like maybe it was maybe it wasn't fairly new to the industry but you know fairly new to the my department and like what we were doing day in day day out I would say that was like for the longest time maybe the most interesting thing from metal sabot for me just because you're you know you're creating all these organic shapes but basically leveraging like injection molding in a sense right like the concept and idea of it uh obviously there's a lot more that goes into metal injection molding than that but um you know from a general perspective then at Edwards I would say like shape setting has been like a very unique um processing that I've been exposed to I'm still like very new uh to the whole shape setting world you know like until Edwards I rarely ever worked with night and all material and at Edwards that's it is you know that's like their bread and butter um so I would say like as of today setting by far is probably the most unique and also like night andlaw material in general is still so young in the industry there's so much uh so much to learn from it so you know it's it's still an alloy that contined to be discovered and studied and kind of different uses for it I I remember the first time I handled a piece of nightl was a piece of nightl wire fairly thin maybe like I don't know 20 thou in diameter something like that and being amazed at the the super elasticity of it right bending it and expecting it to plastically deformed but no it didn't it it was still in within its elastic range I know nightl has a couple different like transitional areas and I don't recall the names of them but U bending it a lot and it would spring right back to its original shape shape which was really really cool I never I I never got to experience any of the um the the shape setting properties of it now I and I don't pretend to understand them well at all but basically you you set the shape somehow and then when you heat it up it it kind of like reforms itself into that shape is that more or less how that goes yeah yeah the I mean that's I think from a general aspect you know as accurate as it can be your your leveraging uh tool that typically would would go into like a salt bath um because you want the material to basically experience uh homogeneous temperature all around it as it's being cooked like that's the definition of cooked or that's kind of what people say it or that's what people say in my department um but yeah you you cook them and then you have to identify like the proper um time frame for it to kind of be at a certain temperature range and then it'll like you said hold its shape once you take it back out of the salt B and uh remove it from the fixturing or tooling that you use to to basically place that component in um and then yeah it retains shape it's pretty cool uh the I think the complexities go into it like you know said like shape or tension you know uh the tricky part there is is um and I'm still learning so I'm gonna I may say some incorrect facts hopefully not but um basically night all has a AF temperature that kind of determined um it's stiffness within like its environment so U if the material had like a AF temperature that you know was close to room temperature um it's likely to be in a different phase of of like its material phases as night all um and you're not going to have the same stiffness or it might become like more malleable um so that's also another kind of tricky part about like shape setting you want to ensure that you're setting the AF temperature to something well below of your operating range fascinating I bet we could do a whole episode just on nightl and its properties oh uh you definitely can I would not be the person for that you definitely want to find somebody with like Decades of experience but uh yeah I mean it's like never ending kind of subject which is nice it's it's very cool to learn all right we'll move on from night now for now uh maybe next year when when you're like Stratosphere level expert we'll have you back and do a full episode on night all that but for now uh so you work in a highly regulated environment medical devices right the FDA um regulates medical device companies what what are some challenges that you've had leading teams through product development phases in such a highly regulated environment and and some strategies that you've used to um most effectively like manage teams in that process yeah I know documentation is probably like a big thing right there's lots of documentation in medical devices yeah I mean that the documentation aspect you know in my mind when I I guess when I strategize of like how to form a team around um a program I definitely you have to pick like if you can handpick your team members or the team that's always the most ideal because you're going to handpick the right characteristics and traits but um to your point you know you don't always because of the documentation uh detailed and and in reality I don't always get to handpick the team you're going to have individuals that kind of just struggle in that environment um so you know my option one if I had the strategy to to go about maning your team is I just select people that understand about value of of like the documentation aspect because I think you couldn't I mean I don't like it a lot of people don't like it but I think as long as you understand the value of it it's a lot more manageable as an individual to go about your day knowing that hey you're going to have to draft up all these documents in order to show objective evidence right that the product you're making is is sound and viable um yeah but uh you know obviously most most of the time you don't you don't get to pick the people so you you kind of have to um try to empower the the stronger individuals in your team to lead their respective areas and kind of just like drive them to motivate others because you can't be there to motivate everybody else for that common goal all the time uh and plus like you know yeah most people are like whatever he's just saying that because he's a he's a manager you know you's got to say that you hear from it appear a little bit different so let's let's dig into that a little bit more there was a period when you were at metronic where you scaled a team I think you almost kind of doubled the team's size going from like 11 to 21 Engineers or or somewhere around there um how what were some things that you did to because as a team grows larger it becomes a lot harder for people to communicate for the left hand to know what the right hand is doing um it it seems like a level of I don't want to say bureaucracy but um I don't know just logistical challenges enter were there anything that you did in particular to to like mitigate the level of overhead as the the number of people grew in the team yeah yeah uh it was definitely very challenging to do to expand the team that quickly uh with metronic but you know one thing that I would say that kind of helped me going into this challenge was that this wasn't it was almost like this wasn't my first time doing it like I've had experienced you know the fortunate experience and then prior roles to scale teams up you know from like it was just two two Engineers or myself and another engineer too to like 13 by the end of the year like I've uh so I've taken so part of I guess how I went about this is one I've been fortunate enough to have the experience so that was good like I knew what to look for I knew the traits that I needed um and I knew how to interview and kind of churn turn through the process of you know getting people into phone interviews figure out who they are and kind of getting a feel for them but at the same time time uh it's almost like echoing um what I was trying you know how I how I manage a team is is um basically identif I like to identify individuals that are high performers and and kind of Leverage them in opportunities to lead uh it mainly in the technical stream I try not to push people to like become managers because a lot of administrative stuff and you know n times out of 10 people like Engineers don't want to do that like they want do all the fun technical work so I I leveraged that to help me you know as you say like have limited overhead right like I didn't need to be there to see everything because I had um x amount you know I had maybe five six people that I could rely on consistently that would kind of be my eyes and ears and I would just trust that uh process it yeah you know you can't scale this fast and micromanage everybody like it's impossible you will you'll drown like you won't be sleeping like it's gonna be you know it's GNA be a process uh just like basically pain continuous pain for you um but yeah uh definitely I I I think the the experience and and the leaders like local leaders was was the biggest thing they really without either of them yeah it would be a struggle um and then also just asking for help when I needed it like uh you know being able to set aside your pride and saying hey you know what this is a little much right now like is there kind of some temporary relief uh that I could get from you know either my respective leaders or other other leaders in the group I think that's huge being able to ask for help um I I did a series just recently I guess technically it still it hasn't concluded but we've been doing a series focused on the question of how to accelerate the speed of engineering the whole episodes have been about those and one of the items that has come up a lot is is Engineers not asking for help soon enough you know just continually struggling trying to solve a problem themselves which is understand able because a that's what Engineers like doing is solving problems and B like you said it can feel a little um uncomfortable to ask for help right you maybe think to yourself oh I'm I'm not doing something right if I need to ask for help I shouldn't need to ask for help I should be able to figure this out when that's not the the case at all in my opinion no one knows how to do everything especially if you're in a a new environment um so I think being able to ask for help is is a a huge asset yeah yeah 100% totally agree well you've worked quite a bit in both product development and process development and and when I say process development I'm largely referring to manufacturing what um at what point in the product development process do you start thinking about about process and and like kind of how do you align those two um phases of of a program or the people working in those two areas of the program yeah yeah so there's you know definitely more than one way to achieve success and and kind of like this question um but from my experience and like this my answer to this if I were being asked like every two years would probably change based on the experience and the exposure that I've had the opportunity of having uh thus far but uh as of today like my my the way I view this is in in the early phase of product development you're not thinking about um repeatability or reproducibility of that process you're thinking about the capability of achieving you know said function or Dimensions um because you're just trying to get a product that will work and um have some success in its uh basically clinical Target uh now the I think to answer your question of like you know when do you start thinking about the process well um I Now understand why nine times out of 10 you don't really think about the process until you have an successful product right like until you have objective evidence that hey this product is going to be viable um and that's that that is where my answer would be now uh the caveat to that is like I think uh the word alignment in your question right um it's more like alignment with with leadership that's like the biggest thing uh because to them once they see a successful product they see the finish line they don't really see all of the obstacles that's that that currently exist to get to that finish line um and that will you know that will basically Define how well is your process going to be so so leadership might see a um uh Beyond just a functional prototype maybe you've gone into clinical trials with something so it's it's pretty matured from from a design standpoint I guess uh and they might see this device working well well it's being successful it's getting good good reviews and they might think great we're done we're ready to go into production but but really there's this like what could be and and maybe at times should be an extensive process of design for manufacturability right figuring out all right how do we make this cheap uh reliable high quality to manufacture now yeah yeah I think yeah that in that instance it's like very critical to have the right people will assess what is capable in in a year span what is capable of you know what a success look like in two years right um because you're going to have veryy different answers you know I've seen I've seen programs I've seen Acquisitions kind of that uh unreal like yeah unrealistic expectation um you know at the higher level whereas like the people on the ground level understand like hey this product is like two years out for being even reasonably feasible for commercial right so yeah I think definitely that that's the key um key factor but hey if you just honestly have just teams of Engineers working on things I mean I think you'll have more success uh in the long run um but you know maybe you won't you won't get the business out there in time so it it's kind of like a baling game yeah right we don't just have all the time and money in the world to deliver a perfect product there are there are business constraints that we need to be cognizant of exactly yeah yeah so it in uh you mentioned that in the early stages of R&D you're not thinking about process that much um at at what point what's the trigger for you to where you start thinking okay now we need to really think about process and dfm and those sorts of things yeah uh I mean for me the biggest trigger is like seeing that confidence in in the products uh objective data at at like like you said you know if you go to clinical trials and you're already starting to get signals of hey this product is doing well you you know you you people some people have been in the industry long enough to kind of keep the onramp starting to develop and that's really like that's really when a team should be focused on like you know it might it might be work that you know becomes nothing because you're you're taking the risk of the parallel parallel activities but you're also kind of getting ahead of like leadership expectations right because on the formal um trials are completed and you have your results and you know it is as was predicted then you're just sprinting from that point so I would say yeah getting signal getting early signals that your product is going to be um viable and and and successful that that's where you want to start exploring different Avenues of of uh manufacturability nice terrific all right well I'm gonna take a short break here and share with the listeners that uh sometimes people think that Aaron is a a podcast host and that's what he does which is not the case um my my day job is president at pipeline design and Engineering where we don't design pipelines but we do help companies develop Advanced manufacturing processes automated machines and custom fixtures complemented with product design and R&D Services you can learn more at Team pipeline. us the podcast is also sponsored by the wave an online platform of free tools education and Community for engineers learn more atth wave. engineer and today we are thrilled to be speaking with Jeff G so Jeff can you talk maybe about some of the key differences in your approach to developing early phase medical devices versus taking them into mass production we kind of hit on it a little bit already but if you could expound on that a little bit what what are the key differences in going into mass production versus the the early stage R&D efforts I would say early phase is a lot of experimenting uh different approaches that have never been done before or maybe you think have never been done before because it's not a popular uh attempt at a solution actually what I would say is like I guess in my current role I from my own perspective and just my perspective um have been amazed at like the ideas that have come through the pipeline and the success at uh our team's capabilities of producing said designs like you know I I I yeah it's just unheard of at least from my perspective for a com you know a company of this size to have that capability because that's more you know you almost think it's like more of like a startup Vibe a little bit right like wow yeah that's great but yeah you know I think uh what I've seen is we do a lot of experimenting um different approaches of uh how to achieve certain clinical targets and and honestly we're not a afraid to iterate and spend the time kind of failing uh fast and and and moving on to the next thing and and realizing all right that didn't work but maybe we could um change something about the design to make it work and you know what will that be like what would what would that present from a um a functional clinical outcome um you know it's it's a lot of yeah it's a lot like a big sandb right just you're just playing you're playing until something sticks I I also love the R&D phase of projects where you're you're inventing something you're figuring out something brand new you're exploring you're experimenting um that's all always where I've enjoyed uh that phase the most as opposed to like maybe a sustaining role where you know maybe you're making incremental improvements to a project or or things like that yeah I I think so now I guess going back to the second part of your question you know like how what are the approaches like how are they different for like mass production you know designed for mass production well U the fact that you're not in the S like the fact that you you have all these outputs that are now defined then you're more so kind of researching and looking at uh you know what's out there in the industry to um perform high speed inspections or achieve certain uh tolerances or uh basically um outputs that would be cost effective uh it's more mass production everything is defined like I guess that's the best way to differentiate the two right one is more you have like a a general goal but you're given like different approaches of how to achieve that goal uh with mass production you have a very nice wall out thought out plan and you know there's already different approaches out there and you kind of just have to select the ones that that makes the most sense and that fits your your requirements um it's still fun for me at least I I enjoy I enjoy like you know figuring out a solution that uh improves to put by like 200% I enjoy um you know being able to kind of present that value it's a different value you're presenting um uh and I think everybody kind of I honestly think like both both sides of of development is is is like has you know their artc to it in a way right like inventing something from trash not taking that invention and mass producing it like that's also a different you know you like a different artist right going from like a sculptor to a painter to to something else so I I've always appreciated both so that that's a good point there that they're almost different skill sets well I think they are different skill sets in your experience has it been different teams who have focused on the R&D versus the transfer to production side or has it often often been the same team that that takes it all the way through yeah you know this is like I would say like a very common um argument feedback that everybody has like you know you meet you meet Engineers that just yeah you know what I want I just want to be R&D rest of my life that's all I want to do then you meet Engineers that want to do everything they want to do they want to invent the product they want to mass-produce it they want to figure out like they want to basically problem solve throughout the whole um Cradle to grave aspect of of the product um in the at least even in the medical industry and you have you seen the same teams go um all the way from R&D through production or have you typically seen like one team focusing on the R&D and then maybe another team comes in to transfer to production do the dfm all that stuff yeah I've seen I've seen it done both ways I've seen okay I've seen it be the same group of people from start to finish and I've seen it where you know you have different groups of people that kind of just hand it's like handing the Baton off right for the marathon um yeah yeah I mean I think both approaches can work it just depends on the teams you know you got to have the right people at the right time and um they all have their pros and cons like to me it would be equal my personal preference is I like being Cradle to Great like I like being at the beginning all the way through the and because it just helps me understand what the importance of everything is from from their designs right like the core reasons for deep Dimensions versus like having to try to figure out what like why did it Dimension it this way why did they put an arm there where I wouldn't have put an arm you know why did they put a feature like it just helped for me just kind of Fe the whole picture so I enjoyed that aspect I think you you hit the nail on the head there um if you can you have to find the right person because not everyone thrives in that cradle tog grave environment but if you find the right people um being able to have the same team take it from R&D through production um doing all the tooling and helping scale things up uh maintain high quality the the continuity throughout that process is so important I mean the less you have to transfer Knowledge from one person's brain to another person's brain the better your program will be because of it so if you can find the right people who thrive in that Cradle to grave um environment then all all the better yeah yeah and that's like a key thing that you said you know it's that transfer of knowledge doesn't always get transferred and you're you're really wasting time right because you're now it's like you have this other group that's just like Reinventing the wheel trying to figure out why things happen for the reason that they happen yeah so yeah yeah that's a I think a big area where um I won't say teams falter but it's it's a a major factor in why projects slow down or or falter sometimes yeah I've seen it man I've seen it too many times I can tell you're speaking from experience there yeah yeah definitely well what um what are some ways that you have found to stay up to date with you know emerging trends new Manufacturing Technologies um especially within medical devices but you know it can be outside of medical devices as well yeah um from my experience I've just I've always just been very like I've delved so deep into my roles and like the places I work for that I I honestly continue to find different um Tech Technologies or um products or um different problems like within my daytoday that it almost keeps me like too busy to have the bandwidth to explore uh different just opportunities uh you know my first day had applied they were big on vertical integration so I mean unless I've touched every process there it's like there's always all these new things that I'm learning you know from packaging all the way to like finish good product assembly so I guess I've been lucky in that sense and uh and when I've moved career like moved companies like that alone you know it's just you have a whole new horizon to kind of explore I was an metronic they had I mean at the time I think they had like 20 business units you know I remember interviewing for their roles and it was like almost impossible for me to figure out which department was which you know like how can I get a how can I get a leg up with uh against the people I'm interviewing against with with like finding product knowledge I can't because it's like the website was so convoluted I couldn't find anything but I would say yeah you know I've just been lucky there's there's definitely a lot and even now like you know you're talking about advancements and matur science like I've never worked with ntin law and just realizing the you know almost like significant amount of applications for the material like that it's just been fun I think that's a really insightful answer I mean you hear kind of typical answers like oh I go to trade shows or just searching on Google or or whatever but changing companies is one I I don't think I've heard before and that that's a really good one because there are all kinds of new processes new technologies new ways of doing things that just inherently are different one company to the next yeah yeah I mean changing I mean imagine if you changed industry right like that is yeah it's a different kind of world everybody's gotos and it's like a whole new you know yeah it's a whole new thing yeah but yeah you know I i' I've just kind of kept my head in in the dayto day and it's it's given me these opportunities so it's been fun um sorry for anybody out there that I guess we're looking for something different that's great all right well uh looking ahead the next I don't know five to 10 years or so what what do you think the the industry is heading the medical device industry specifically since that's where the bulk of your experience is um what do you see happening in the next five to 10 years yeah it's like the things or the technologies that I've seen I've never expected to see but they exist yeah yeah yeah I think the easiest answer that probably most people would would be able to find right now is just how how would you integrate uh AI right to yeah to the opportunities of of of certain types of procedures um you know I think that in a way is probably the next stage um because I've heard it uh you know just different companies co-workers there been talk not like not to the point where it's like taking over but it's definitely a topic that exists um it's coming it's coming yeah coming you know so there's there's that opportunity um I mean I guess from my perspective it's kind of like a double-edged sword right because it's like there's so much power to this type of Technology but then there's also like could there be that much risk on the other side right right yeah we have a lot less control once AI steps in right we don't really know what's going on under the hood yeah yeah unless you're the guy that made the AI right even then I feel like the complexities of of true AI um I was talking with a a technologist uh what's his name Kevin can't remember his last name but he he was he was uh telling me how um in in a medical application it was like screening for cancer or or something like that they would feed uh like x-rays into uh an AI and teach it like which which patients had cancer and which ones didn't and and it got to the point where the AI could predict which ones had cancer even sometimes when doctors couldn't look at the the X-ray or the scan whatever the data was I don't even know if it was an x-ray some kind of data the doctors couldn't even predict it but the AI could predict it and the AI didn't have it didn't have the the vocabulary to explain to the doctors why it knew that there was cancer in that patient um because the the the the methodologies or the processes by which the AI work are that there aren't there aren't necessarily words for it it's like this brand new thing so I thought that was really interesting like the AI didn't have the words to explain how it knew what it knew that that is interesting aside from like my experience with like you know Google like chat gbt I have yet to um experience like what what what you just said like true AI you know like an actual Computing being that is like free of commands right because like even like when you do you know chat GPD school it's like a uh how do I explain it it's a more advanced search search Google search you know in a way yeah right but I'm still providing boundary conditions I'm not you know it's not like off on the tone just like coming at me with conversation right right yeah yeah well let me let me give you one more question and then we'll we'll wrap things up here um what what's one thing that you have seen or done to accelerate the speed of engineering you know to to reduce the amount of time required to complete a project or to advance a project more quickly then maybe it would have otherwise yeah so I would say um you know people that are leaders of of programs or projects like they you know part of I would think part of their main responsibilities is to almost like foree the roadblocks and most of these roadblocks from my experience I've been like bureaucratic uh it's a lot of you know red tape that you kind of just need to get ahead of it you know whether it's like uh some examples are like this manufacturing plant has a different set of Sops that you know this other plant is used to but you have to somehow integrate and work together like getting ahead of that is big uh it's not fun because that kind of resolution is more uh yeah I would say kind of like red tape here trying to figure out what works between both plants it's not really I would say like a technical challenge more like people development I guess you know people skill thing um yeah but doing that and letting the team the engineering team do the technical work I think that's in my opinion how you Speed Up Programs like you keep them out of with just back and forth all these people related uh problem solving that most engineering teams don't want to do uh yeah and that's really my opinion where you could be the most effective as a either a people leader or a program manager yeah REM removing those obstacles the politics the bureaucracies and just allowing them to focus on the technical work the engineering yeah definitely that's great yeah great all right well Jeff thank you so much for being on the show today how can people get in touch with you yeah uh I'm on LinkedIn we'll put a link to uh to your profile profile there you go perfect yeah okay well great Jeff thank you so much again for being on the show today yeah no I appreciate your time and thanks for having me I'm Aaron moner founder of pipeline design and Engineering if you liked what you heard today please share the episode to learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing Advanced manufacturing processes automated machines and custom fixtures complemented with product design and R&D Services visit us at Team pipeline. us

to join a Vibrant Community of Engineers online visit the wave. engineer thank you for listening [Applause]

2024-11-09 21:27

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