A Perspective on Holistic Engineering Management

The following sections are included:

• Dedication
• Foreword
• Preface
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures

After the U.S. patent for the telephone was granted in 1876 it took over 60 years for it and the required infrastructure to evolve to the point where it was adopted by 40% of households in the United States. When the first smartphone was introduced, about 120 years later, it only took ten years for it and the required infrastructure to evolve and achieve the same level of adoption. Today, the development of many different technologies that once took years can be done in months or weeks. In parallel, there has been a dramatic increase in the importance of suppliers. Engineers from Apple design each iPhone and work with companies such as Intel, Micron, Broadcom Texas Instruments, NXP, Samsung, TSMC, Amkor, Corning and many others to define and integrate their components. Apple’s list of official suppliers is over 30 pages long. There are few examples today where the engineering work is completely contained in one company or one engineering organization. Business strategies have also evolved. The analysis of competitive forces in an industry has matured to include the concepts of disruptive innovation and coopetition (that coined the word, complementor). Today, a prosperous technology company can be disrupted and put out of business in a blink of an eye. Similarly, in an ecosystem characterized by rapid changes in technology and how it is developed, an engineering R&D organization will quickly become irrelevant if it fails to enable the pace of innovation needed to win. This book gives our perspective on how a holistic approach to engineering management creates an R&D system that avoids that fate and thrives…

This chapter is about the values and beliefs employees have that are specific to the workplace and guide their work. We call this the culture of the R&D organization. Culture is the second chapter of the book because of its impact on everything we will talk about later. The phrase, “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, is often attributed to Peter Drucker, and it speaks to the influence that the culture has on an organization’s performance. We believe that this phrase does not go far enough and prefer the variant, “culture eats everything for breakfast”. Providing autonomy to employees is critical to enabling the pace of innovation needed to increase velocity. A common culture that reinforces the R&D organization’s values and strategy enables employee autonomy while ensuring fidelity to the mission. Conversely, autonomy without a common culture leads to chaos…

In the previous chapter, we discussed the critical role that culture plays in the R&D organization. We feel it is important to devote a chapter to an important topic heavily dependent on the culture. That is, creating an environment of inclusion that benefits from a diverse workforce…

Employees operate more effectively when they understand what constitutes value and how their work contributes to it. This helps them identify tasks that have value and those that do not. When coupled with a culture that motivates everyone to continuously learn and improve, a clear understanding of value enables everyone to reduce or eliminate time spent on wasteful tasks and increase the time spent on tasks that have value…

Engineers in the R&D organization and other entities are responsible for tasks in workflows and processes that span the R&D system. The completion of each task generates information on the effectiveness of the engineering decisions and the operation of the workflows and processes. When this knowledge is used to improve subsequent engineering decisions or incrementally improve the workflows and processes, then a learning cycle has been completed. Learning cycles are a critical part of enabling continuous improvement in the R&D system…

As we described in the introduction, the R&D manager leads their organization and also directs the R&D system within a larger ecosystem that includes existing and potential competitors that pose a threat and potential new suppliers, customers and others that provide opportunities for cooperation. To remain vital, the R&D organization must anticipate and respond to that evolving ecosystem. This is true even if the R&D organization is buried deep within a company and delivers only to other internal groups. The process of doing that is what we call strategic planning…

Development focuses on the implementation of the engineering work and the coordination required to complete it. For the type of engineering we are considering in this book, the results must satisfy goals related to such things as cost, compatibility, reliability, serviceability, safety and performance and ensure that they are achieved over a range of operating conditions. As a result, development processes and practices involve iterative cycles of planning, modeling, prototyping, analysis, optimization and testing to converge in a final design. The activities are completed inside the R&D organization and with other entities in the R&D system under the direction of the R&D organization. The development function also includes continuous improvement of the whole value stream…

Although many concepts in this chapter can be applied to other types of research, this chapter specifically addresses engineering research. In our definition, engineering research increases the power of engineering by creating new knowledge and more powerful modeling, analysis and optimization methods to solve design problems. The results can be used to increase the value of current technologies or enable new technologies and, hence, new value. This is very much applied research and not pure research. Applied research also differs from development due to its emphasis on experimentation vs. application…

The R&D organization includes the employees and other assets in the direct chain of command of the manager. An organization is needed to handle the complexity of the many interdependent and concurrently running functions and processes required to develop and deploy engineering solutions. We have already discussed the common concepts of culture, diversity, inclusion, value, waste, velocity and learning cycles. We have also detailed the core R&D functions of strategic planning, development and engineering research. In this chapter, we discuss how all of these elements come together…

The R&D system is the specific collection of entities, assembled and directed by the manager of the R&D organization to work together and deliver the engineering product or service. This includes the R&D organization, along with its suppliers, customers, institutes, consortia, and others. Although these entities do not report to them, the manager of the R&D organization directs the co-development, collaboration, coopetition and continuous improvement across the R&D system for the benefit of the R&D organization…

For our book, the R&D organization’s engagement with academia spans activities that include: small one time projects, education and hiring of new college graduates, continuous informal connections at conferences, major joint research projects, joint research goals within consortia (such as the SRC), through long term interaction based upon national funding organizations (such as the NSF). There is a great opportunity for both the R&D organization and a university to benefit if they engage. However, for the engagement to be beneficial, all parties must understand the objectives of the other parties. As described in previous chapters, the R&D organization’s success is determined by delivering value to the customers. Academic success is determined by delivering educated students and by research that discovers truth.

Information security protects organizational structure details, development process techniques and procedures, personnel assignments and capabilities, and technology development schedules or technical details from potential attackers. Information security is a corporate-wide issue and must be part of the R&D organization’s culture. Individual privacy protects personal information. National and international laws mandate security and privacy requirements in addition to the security and privacy policies and practices for the corporation. The manager of the R&D organization has an important role to play in prioritizing security resources and that requires a rudimentary understanding of information security concepts. As a result, we devote this chapter to that topic…

Throughout this book, we have highlighted the key responsibilities of the R&D manager when it comes to the foundation and core functions of the R&D organization and system. We dedicate this chapter to reinforce the critical leadership behaviors that must be developed and applied to successfully implement what we have discussed so far…

Holistic engineering management is a broad topic. In this book, we discussed the foundational concepts of culture, diversity, inclusion, value, waste, velocity and learning cycles that are key attributes of the R&D organization. We then discussed the core R&D functions of strategic planning, development, engineering research and how they can be organized and work with the rest of the R&D system. We ended with discussions on the special topics of academic engagement, information security and leadership…

The following sections are included:

• Glossary
• Index
• About the Authors