How to Handle Short Development Cycles

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

I have always wanted to write and share my experiences with others, and now I have been fortunate enough to have a friend introduce me to this opportunity. I hope that it will help you be successful. Without all the great people I have worked with, I would not be in a career that I enjoy every day. My first few columns will focus on the challenges of short development cycles in the automotive industry. In this first column, I will introduce three concepts: developing relationships, delegating, and stopping mistakes, which can all help you survive the issues in short development cycles. Future columns will expand in detail on these three concepts and illustrate how to specifically realize the improvements. Automotive is a segment that any market can learn from. In past years, we had a saying: “You can have cheap, on-time or high quality; pick two.” Going back five years, this was the response to short development cycles. In looking at the last two years, however, we have the reality of the short development cycle. Mix this with the recent recalls and safety issues, and it is now an unwritten requirement to deliver low cost, high quality and on time. It is not uncommon to go from idea to series production in only 14 months.

As a senior engineering manager responsible for electrical, software and mechanical engineering, I have run into many topics that created challenges for my team. In the end, the solutions for the many challenges were relatively simple and carried over to all other projects. Interestingly, the most effective solutions did not have any technical relation to the challenge—it was simply a change in process or culture. My focus is keeping it simple. The most elegant solutions to problems are often the simplest ones.

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Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the September 2015 issue of The PCB Magazine.