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It’s Only Common Sense: Producing the Greatest Products Possible

Laurene Powel Jobs, wife of Apple Co-Founder and CEO Steve Jobs, was once quoted describing how her husband and legendary designer Jony Ive would spend hours discussing corners. Yes, that’s right—corners. I also read that Apple had an entire quality department dedicated to boxes, including a device that would check how those boxes would open and close. How many of us have a collection of empty iPhone and iPod boxes just hanging around because they are too well designed to throw away? I don’t know about you, but I hate packaging that I have to destroy to open. There is a certain inelegance in ripping the box to get to my HP printer cartridge. Nobody is saving those boxes!

Jony Ive once said this about design: “In some way, by caring, we’re actually serving humanity. People might think it’s a stupid belief, but it’s a goal—it’s a contribution that we hope we can make, in some small way, to culture.”

Further, Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design and director of R&D at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), said, “[Apple’s] great design secret may be avoiding insult. [Their thoughtfulness is] a sign of respect. Elegance in objects is everybody’s right, and it shouldn’t cost more than ugliness. So much of our manufacturing environment testifies to carelessness.”

Wow! Where am I going with this? Why am I talking about Apple, design, and even quoting a curator at MoMA? I bet this is the first time MoMA has ever been mentioned in an article related to printed circuit board technology!

Here is my point: To be a great PCB fabricator, assembly company, or manufacturing company—that is to be successful in any facet—you must pay attention to the customer. This includes finding ways to elate and delight that customer. Just like Jobs and Ive talked about corners for hours on end, we must spend time thinking about our customers and how to find elegant ways to delight them.

Don’t tell me that a PCB company is just a job shop or that an assembly company is just putting someone else’s product together for them, because when you do, you are self-commoditizing. You are bringing your product down to the anybody-can-do-this-level. This is untrue and diminishes your company and products.

Ask yourself these questions:

• How many times have you purposely sat down with your team to discuss customer connections from your salesperson’s first call to the final shipment of the product?
• How many times have you envisioned your customers receiving your product and opening your packaging?
• Or better yet, when was the last time you visited a customer’s receiving department to see what they do when they open your packages, or opened your own packaging at all, to know exactly what that feels like?
• How many times have you extended your vision beyond what you’re building to where your product is going to end up? Have you envisioned what your product is going into and how that end product will change the world or contribute to that change?
• On the other side of the spectrum, how many times have you made a mistake with your product that directly affected your customers? Were there times you didn’t send the right paperwork, coupons, or the C of Cs, or when the quantity in the box did not match the invoice?

Mistakes are a gross inconvenience to the customer who cannot clear your product out of receiving and onto the manufacturing floor. It is also an insult to that customer because it sends the message that you did not care enough to send the very best.

The old adage, “Take care of the little things and the big things will follow,” has never been truer than it is today. Yes, our customers are demanding and they want more from us than ever before. But that is because they are getting the same high demands from their customers. They are trying to thrill their own customers and want you to thrill them in return.

Great craftsmen have been known to say that they leave a little piece of themselves, a little bit of their heart, in every product they produce. They spend hours producing the best art, writing, furniture, and other creations, such as sculptures, landscapes, and quilts, so they can share their passion with the receivers of their works. Why should it be different for us? Go ahead, sit down with your team once a week and talk to them about how your company can produce products that will delight and thrill your customers—products that will have the best of everyone in your company within them.

It’s only common sense.