Jul 22, 2020
Digital Enterprise Society is the authority on the
transformation to a digital enterprise, impacting all areas of an
organization. Tune in for discussions among industry leaders about
operations and action needed to drive digitization principles
forward for the future of product development and life
cycles.
In today’s episode, Thom Singer
and Craig Brown welcome Kevin Brittain, the Multidisciplinary
Optimization Group Leader at Cummins, Inc. Kevin coaches a team
that is focused on bringing cross-functional models together to
solve problems across the product life cycle. He defines MDO,
explains why it is so powerful, and highlights the importance of
putting people before processes or tools. He offers
suggestions to help overcome adoption resistance and highlights the
overarching benefits of rejecting silo work and embracing
cross-functional decision making. As an industry leader who is
clearly passionate about his work, Kevin’s career advice is advice
that will help anyone excel in their work and in their
relationships.
On today’s podcast, you will
learn:
Understanding multidisciplinary design
optimization
- Kevin
defines MDO as the enabling of cross-functional decision making
through the integration and optimization of diverse simulation
models across the product lifecycle.
- How
can you bring functions together rather than having parallel
functional model silos working independently on a broader
problem?
- What
is the key to linking information across models for greater
information sharing?
- Bringing this information together allows for
greater cross-functional decision making.
- Enable decision making and highlight the
trade-offs that come as a result.
Why is MDO so powerful?
- MDO
is more affordable than ever, making it widely available for
greater use.
- What
are the benefits of honing in on the optimal trade space that
exists between the decision makers and the constraints?
- MDO
allows for utilizing the models that would be used to help make
decisions in the product development cycle to answer the problem of
constraints across several groups.
- MDO
effectively addresses the manufacturing cost factor of
optimization.
People, then processes and tools
- Making sustainable change requires a broader
vision that focuses on people.
- How
are roles defined in order to enable a bigger vision? How is change
enabled through process?
- Changing the workflow is the critical step to
effecting lasting change for any problem.
- Democratization refers to bringing the
capabilities of powerful simulation tools into the hands of
non-experts.
- Models have tremendous knowledge of systems and
can be used throughout the whole product lifecycle to help make
better decisions.
- Resistance to change needs to be addressed and
the people who hold the knowledge need to be valued.
- People who help make changes feel ownership of
the new culture and will embrace it even faster.
- There
doesn’t need to be any competition — effective change happens by
taking what was already great and improving upon it.
Career advice from an engineer
- If
you don’t understand something, start by Googling it.
- Building relationships is the key to a
successful career — engineering is a social exercise.
- Find
the work that you are passionate about and then enjoy working hard
at it.
- Maintain high standards for the company that
you work for and for the people you work with.
Do you have an example of
extraordinary efforts or innovation during these unprecedented
times? We would love to hear your story and possibly interview you
for an upcoming episode. Please reach out to us at
www.DigitalEnterpriseSociety.org