Snowboarding season begins officially.
Opening day snowboard shenanigans. On problem solving through iteration.
Hi Friend,
Greetings from Newark, Delaware.
December 3rd was the opening day of the snowboarding season. My friends and I headed to Jack Frost Ski Resort to kickoff the exciting season ahead. We got an early start at 7 am in the morning to beat the crowds and I was pumped to put my YouTube snowboarding knowledge into practice.
However, my first 5 minutes on the snow were horrible. The foot muscles that I needed to steer my snowboard weren’t familiar with this activity. About half-way down my first bunny hill run, they didn’t want to do anything with it. So they cramped up, leaving me immobile on the snow.
I just lay there staring at the gray sky contemplating life choices. It was excruciating. No! I didn’t cry. I was close though.
I couldn’t take my boots off in the snow but I also couldn’t have my feet in them. I somehow trudged back to the resort building. The sweet relief of freeing my caged feet from the snowboard boots was chef’s kiss. I stretched the muscles in any way I could and hoping for relief. Slowly, things got better and twenty minutes later I headed back.
I knew the pain could be a possibility and should have trained better.
Abe Lincoln has said on preparing.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
Often times we prepare. We may think that we are sharpening the axe. But I wonder if how we sharpen the axe is equally important?
I will be scouring the internet for tips to prevent muscle cramps during snowboarding and be better prepared for the next weekend. If you know of any, let me know.
🦾On becoming a bomb engineer
This Week: Problem solving through iteration
There are 3 main steps to fix an issue.
Identify the problem.
Determine the root cause of the problem.
Find a solution for the root cause.
We looked at the first two steps in the previous two editions. After fixing the low hanging issues for defect A, it was time to tackle the major cause.
Making iterative changes is a good start for an entry level engineer to finding solutions. Make a change and see if it works. Make notes of the things that worked in this iteration as well as the things that didn’t work. Make a modified change based on the findings until you reach an optimal solution.
But always make sure that every iteration has only one change. Because if you make 3 changes in one iteration, you won’t know what change actually improved it or made it worse. The goal of each iteration should be to go closer to solving the problem.
Going back to the example of defect A. Tooling design was a major cause of defect A. But to change the design, I had to study all the associated drawings as well as the machine systems. That led me to figure out what specific tooling needed to be modified.
To get to a solution, I would make a design change, 3D print a prototype, test it and take notes. The next design was a slightly modified version of the current iteration based on lessons learned. I failed on numerous occasions until after a few months I finally had a breakthrough design.
I won’t bore you with the technical details of the design changes I made. But the final iteration reduced the defect A by 86 %. Problem solving through iteration boils down to four steps.
Make one change
Figure out the positives and negative impacts of that change
Study the impacts to form the basis of your next change
Repeat
Now, finding a solution through iterations may take several days or months. But as an entry level engineer it helps to build deeper process level knowledge that will help you with future process improvements.
Also, being persistent is crucial to solving problems through iterations. If you drop the ball, there is no way you will reach an optimal solution.
As an entry level engineer you don’t need complex techniques to solve a problem. Once you understand the root cause of a problem. You can tackle the problem through iterations. Find a possible solution and trying variation of the solution.
⛺️ Content I’m Digging
🎙️Jim Collins on the Tim Ferris Show. (2hr 24 min)
The one big takeaway for me was the Flywheel Principle. For a successful career, figure out what you are passionate about, what are you the best at, and what drives your economic engine. The intersection of these three will guide you to take actions.
“A flywheel is an underlying, compelling logic of momentum. If you do A, you almost can’t help but do B. And if you do B, you almost can’t help but do C. And around and around to turn the flywheel.”
A big breakthrough isn’t the result of one significant action but the result of several small ones.
Quote of the week
James Dyson on iterations
You can't expect to get it exactly right the first time. It took me 5,127 prototypes--5,127 iterations--to develop the first bagless vacuum cleaner. Every iteration can be improved upon, and each of these failures teaches you something that you can apply to the next iteration. It's highly frustrating, of course, but worth it.
Thank you for reading.
I really appreciate your attention.
Your friend,
Shubham