Friday, September 15

8:30 a.m.
Differentiate at The Fuzzy Front
  • Chris Von Dohlen
  • Manager - Strategic Design
  • Target Corporation
Do you know what you need to know to differentiate your products in the market place? Do you see and know the critical knowledge   necessary for the "fuzzy front end” of projects?  Chris Von Dohlen will present the critical ‘fuzzy front end’ knowledge used by the large companies that drive product and market differentiation strategy. Chris will describe the knowledge needed for your initiatives to drive them to success:  patterns, trends and knowledge gaps. He will describe his experiences ‘upping the periscope’ to identify opportunities, analyze the trends and see the risks to avoid.

9:30 a.m.
Augmented Reality – 3D enables Product Learning, Training, and Critical Knowledge Transfer
  • Ron Cozad
  • VR System Developer
  • The Toro Company (ret)
  • Savvy Consortium Member
Critical Technical Knowledge transfer is the key to waste free knowledge flow from the design engineers to many technical people. The knowledge flow from design engineers to manufacturing engineers; to product/assembly people; to field service people; to product marketing people; to repair and replace service people; to work instruction people. The VR system Ron Cozad has developed with design engineers at the hub of the critical knowledge wheel’s spokes is a system that improves productivity and reduces waste. Ron will demonstrate his VR system, BOM components, and costs to conference attendees.

10:45 a.m.
Integrating Software Design into Mechanical Product Development
  • Jeff Meyer
  • Systems Engineering
  • Senior Engineering Manager
  • The Toro Company

The intersection of software development and product engineering development can build a strong competitive advantage in new product performance. Jeff Meyers will describe his experiences starting up a software design process and Toro. He will describe his practices building software talented people. He will describe the process and people ‘constraints’ and ‘enablers.’ Collaborating with Toro’s mechanical design people and talent, Jeff’s software developers have improved the quality, safety and productivity of Toro’s commercial products. These improvements result in high levels of customer satisfaction for the ‘smart’ product design the market expects from Toro.

11:30 a.m.
The Savvy Practices: Wellspring of NPP Continuous Improvement
  • Todd Stute
  • Director of Global Process Improvement
  • Western Digital Corporation
Todd Stute will show and describe how to learn and adapt best practices, starting with people and process challenges that need improvement. Todd will demonstrate ‘savvy learning cycles’ engineering managers use to move up the experience curve quickly and successfully. He will assemble interested people in piloting an initiative.

12:00pm
Lunch

1:00 p.m.
Savvy Benchmark Session
  • Todd Stute
  • Director of Global Process Improvement
  • Western Digital Corporation
Design and Facilitated by Todd Stute. Savvy Conference participants will benchmark each other’s product development practices. Starting with the discussion of the problem are, Todd Stute will direct the focus on how they experiment with tools, processes, and adapt improvements to surmount common problems. You will hear/see the metrics, solutions and tools used at various levels of operations: team processes, functional engineering, support functions and tools. A3, PDCA, Lamda, Six Sigma, scrum boards, change management practices, et. al. Topics Include: 1. Insufficient Knowledge of Customer Expectations 2. Excessive Workloads 3. Learning Cycles Yielding Little Value 4. Risks: Technical and Schedule 5. Invisible Challenges: Make Them Visual 6. Vertical Communication/ Executive Collaboration

4:45 p.m.
Wrap-up