Timing Reliability in Product Design, with Jeffrey Lewis (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

Dianna Deeney interviews Jeffrey Lewis about new product development: how timing the right activities can lead to product success.

This interview is part of our series, “A Chat with Cross Functional Experts”. Our focus is speaking with people that are typically part of a cross-functional team within engineering projects. We discuss their viewpoints and perspectives regarding new products, the values they bring to new product development, and how they’re involved and work with product design engineering teammates.

About Jeffrey

Jeff is a senior director of corporate quality at Globus Medical. He’s a quality, reliability, risk management and product development professional. He is experienced at building quality into products, manufacturing processes and all business processes. Jeff is an accomplished executive with experience directing design and development and quality staff to meet company goals and objectives.

Jeffrey and Dianna talk about:

The delicate balance between knowing what you know and discovering what you don’t.
Incorporating reliability tools like Design FMEA (failure mode and effects analysis) and TAFT (test-analyze-fix-test) into the design process to improve designs and make products more reliable and manufacturable.
Signs that a product development process needs improvement.
How, by fostering a collaborative environment, product designers can balance the pressures of completing a project within a given timeframe and still ensure the quality and reliability of their work.

Jeff’s wealth of experience and insights provide a roadmap for quality and reliability in product design, making it a must-listen for all in product development and design.

View the Episode Transcript

What can you do today?

To improve the project you’re on today, remember to step-back to gain perspective of where you are on the product development journey. Do we have the right focus right now? Do we have the right understanding? Are we likely to besuccessful with this step? Is there something that we can bring to this early on? What are the biggest risks?

Understand the knowns and the unknowns; what we have learned and what we still need to learn.