CHANGING THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN ENGINEERS AND MANAGEMENT

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CHANGINGTHE DIALOGUEBETWEEN ENGINEERSAND
MANAGEMENT

PRODUCTIVITY IMPACT LUNCHEON
Co-contributors
Co-producers
June 5, 2007
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SPEAKERS
PRODUCTIVITY IMPACT LUNCHEON

• Kathryn Kranen - Jasper Design Automation,
  EDA Consortium, Vice-Chairperson, CA
• Brian Fuller - EE Times, San Francisco, CA
• Lisa Tafoya - FSA, Dallas, TX

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Challenge Demands on Electronic Design

• Moores law continues its climb
• Nanometer feature sizes
• Closer scrutiny of design physics
• Verification complexity
• Consumer applications are process drivers
• Sensitivity to costs
• Time-to-market

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Consequences for Management Engineers

• Management focuses on cost reduction
• Overriding emphasis on cost containment
• Instead of innovation and productivity
• Engineers are induced to surrender role as change
  agents of improvement
• Due to increased schedule pressure and stress

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Market ResearchPoints to Problems Solutions

• EETimes statistics describe the Embattled
  Engineer
• Presented by Brian Fuller, EETimes
• MIT study demonstrates the work harder trap
  leading to the loss of productivity and
  innovation
• Presented by Kathryn Kranen, Jasper Design
  Automation and EDA Consortium
• New FSA study aims to show innovation and
  productivity drivers for semi. industry
• Lisa Tafoya, of FSA will tell you how to
  participate in surveys receive reports.

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Solution Changing the Dialogue

• Innovation and productivity are the cornerstones
  of electronic design
• They dramatically impact corporate
  competitiveness
• Engineers and management can work together to
  foster improvement
• Break the work harder cycle with frank,
  substantive conversations about factors affecting
  engineering productivity

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PRODUCTIVITY IMPACT LUNCHEON
HOW ENGINEERS AND MANAGERS COMMUNICATE A VIDEO
PARODY
June 5, 2007
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THE EMBATTLED ENGINEER
PRODUCTIVITY IMPACT LUNCHEON

• Brian Fuller - EE Times, San Francisco, CA

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No pressure.not!

• All EEs see selves as part of a team, but
• Most see an engineering shortage
• And outsourcing clouds hang darkly above
• And isnt particularly effective for designs
• Older engineers (Ave. age 46) worry about
  retirement

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Length of Average Work Week
Mean 2006 46.5 hours Mean 2005 47.1 hours
26. What is the length of your average work week?
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Engineers Under Significant Pressure at Work
Agree Strongly
From General Social Survey (ICPSR) sample of
college educated males between 21 and 65
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And Have a Challenging Work Environment
Agree Strongly
From General Social Survey (ICPSR) sample of
college educated males between 21 and 65
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Career Concerns
Top-two Box Very/Somewhat Concerned




Those under 35 more concerned with work/life
balance salaries, and education programs, while
older engineers (35) appear to be more concerned
with offshore outsourcing, pensions, and age
discrimination


Indicates significant difference between 2006
and 2005 at 95 confidence level
36. With which of the following career issues are
you concerned?
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MIT STUDY NOBODY EVER GETS CREDIT FOR FIXING
PROBLEMS THAT NEVER HAPPENED

PRODUCTIVITY IMPACT LUNCHEON

• Presented by Kathryn Kranen - Jasper Design
  Automation EDA Consortium, Vice-Chairperson
• Source Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing
  Problems that Never Happened Creating and
  Sustaining Process Improvement by Nelson P
  Rpenning and John D. Stermann, Sloan School of
  Management, Massachusetts Institute of
  Technology, distributed by Harvard Business
  Online, CMR208.

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Why We Dont Always Work Smarter

• We all know
• One hour work One hour output
• One hour process improvement Improved output
  for all subsequent hours
• In practice
• Because working harder and taking shortcuts
  produce more immediate gains and help solve
  todays problems, managers unaware of the
  inherent better before worse trade-off are
  likely to choose them over working smarter.

MIT Study
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Working Harder Better-before-Worse Dynamic

• Performance temporarily rises
• but this is short-lived
• Time spent improving falls immediately
• but capability does not
• Capability and morale gradually erodes
• to eventually offset additional time spent working

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Working Smarter Worse-before-Better Dynamic

• Increasing the time spent on improvement reduces
  output
• in the short run.
• Eventually capability rises
• more than enough to offset the drop in work
  effort
• And performance is permanently higher

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Working Harder Organizational Consequences

• Engineers routinely neglect to reveal the
  existence of serious design issues for fear of
  retribution from managers.
• In one firm the motto of the development
  engineers was never reveal you have a problem
  until you also have the solution.

MIT Study
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Simulations of Working Harder and Working Smarter
Strategies
MIT Study
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Simulations of Working Harder and Working Smarter
Strategies

• A short-term assessment indicates that capability
  improvements reduce output
• Long-term assessment tells a far different story

MIT Study
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Working Harder Getting Out of the Trap

• Working harder results in
• Trap of increasing stress and declining process
  capability.
• Rewarded by immediate gains and ability to solve
  todays problems
• Breaking the cycle
• Once the cycle of self-confirming attributions
  is broken, any number of process improvements
  tools and methods can help improve capability.
  Without this shift, new tools and techniques, no
  matter how great their potential, are unlikely to
  succeed.

MIT Study
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Conclusion

• The most important implication of MITs
  analysis is that our experiences often teach us
  exactly the wrong lessons about how to maintain
  and improve the long-term health of the
  organization.

MIT Study
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The Ultimate Product Nightmare

• Airbus A380
• 2 year unexpected project delay
• 6.0 billion in lost profits
• 10.0 billion in lost orders
• A Trillion Dollar Engineering Error
• Root cause unable to manufacture the wiring
  system due to mechanical CAD problems

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Situation Analysis

• Top-down, market-driven schedule
• Distributed multi-national engineering and
  manufacturing teams
• Last minute spec changes - copper to aluminum
  wiring
• Concurrent Engineering to allow end-user
  customization during manufacturing
• Low priority on re-tooling and re-training
  engineers

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Cost containment drove decisions

• The cost to train the engineers in Catia V5 may
  have been the sticking point for Airbus
  management that led to the A380's
  multibillion-euro design flaw. "Airbus made the
  decision not to migrate Germany to Catia V5
  because it would have meant a complete
  retraining," says Geoff Haines, managing director
  of Cenit Ltd. in Oxford, England. "They decided
  not to do it for budgetary reasons.
  Baseline Magazine

• Why wouldn't Airbus factories all clamor to
  switch to the latest software? Some local
  managers apparently balked because of the time
  and expense involved in retraining engineers to
  use new design tools. Still, Airbus' top
  management could have insisted on the
  changeoverbut it didn't.
• Business Week

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Attempted to solve problems by working harder
but failed

• To try to keep production on schedule, the
  company imported engineers and mechanics from its
  factory in Hamburg, Germany, to toil round the
  clock in Toulouse. But the extra manpower has not
  been enough In June, the company revealed that
  wiring difficulties would delay deliveries by six
  months. Then, in October, it shocked the aviation
  world by announcing still more delays, this time
  up to a year. Popular Mechanics

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Airbus CEOs Recovery Plan

• Right Tools, Right Training, Right People, and
  Right Oversight by Management
• Under the leadership of the new Airbus
  President and CEO Christian Streiff, strong
  measures have been taken, which, in addition to
  management changes, include the implementation of
  the same proven tools on all sites, as well as
  the creation of multi-national teams to better
  use the best skills available. Simultaneously,
  training is being organised to swiftly bring the
  employees using those tools to the optimum level.
  With the right tools, the right people, the right
  training and the right oversight and management
  being put in place, the issue is now addressed at
  its root, although it will take time until these
  measures bear fruit. Airbus Press Release
  Oct 06

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Solutions for Management

• Empower and recognize engineers for process
  innovation
• Reward those who take initiative to advance
  design methodologies and learn new skills
• Rather than the ones who simply work overtime
  to bail out delayed projects
• Schedule time between projects to improve
  capabilities
• Evaluate and select new design tools
• Train engineers before production work begins

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Solutions for Engineers

• Voice schedule and risk realities assertively and
  persistently
• Take the initiative to advance design
  methodologies and improve capabilities
• Understand that senior management needs to hear
  the engineers good judgment
• Vs. an abundance of data - on design, schedule,
  and EDA tool alternatives.

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What DOES Work

• Long term productivity gains happen when
  organizations make a conscious effort to retool
  their engineers and reward process improvements.
  
• The result is sustainable innovation in
  electronic design.

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BENCHMARKINGPRODUCTIVITY INNOVATION

PRODUCTIVITY IMPACT LUNCHEON

• Lisa Tafoya - FSA, Dallas, TX

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FSA Innovation Profitability Benchmarking Survey
Lisa Tafoya Vice President of Global
Research June 5, 2007
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FSA Innovation Profitability SurveyGoals

• Semiconductor Companies
• Provide new, high-level foundation for
  benchmarking key success indicators (KSIs) to
  develop best practices for long-term innovation
  and productivity improvement, resulting in
  greater industry profitability.
• Suppliers
• Educate on key metrics measuring semiconductor
  companies innovation and productivity
  performance to enable efficiencies and
  productivity gains for the industry.

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FSA Innovation Profitability Survey
Objectives Approach

• Objectives
• Develop a core set of KSIs, or Dashboard
  Metrics for management evaluation from both
  internal and industry segment perspectives
• Highlight innovative practices in industry
• Demonstrate strong productivity measures of
  semiconductor IC companies
• Create new ways to measure design practices for
  increased profitability
• Long-term, trend-based analysis to identify how
  industry and economic cycles impact company
  performance
• Tops-Down Approach evaluating the impact of
  design activities
• Revenue
• Profit
• Time-to-Market

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FSA Innovation and Profitability Survey Key
Success Indicators

• KSIs are significantly interrelated.
• Increasing Revenue KSIs will result from reducing
  Time-to-Market KSIs (e.g. Average Time-to-First
  Revenue and Average Spins per Design)
• Profit KSIs will be positively impacted by the
  combination of efficient RD expenditures,
  Revenue KSIs, and improvements to Time-toMarket
  KSIs

Revenue KSIs
IMPORTANT Evaluate all KSIs when analyzing
Innovation Profitability
Profit KSIs
Time-to- Market KSIs
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FSA Innovation Profitability Survey Next Steps

• FSA will survey participants quarterly to develop
  trend data to take into account various
  institutional, industry or economic elements that
  may be affecting the innovation and profitability
  of the semiconductor industry.
• Survey targets include public and private
  semiconductor companies
• Analysis based on public/private, revenue,
  industry segment and geography served to
  establish best-in-class benchmarks.
• Create and publish dashboard metrics based on
  results/trends.
• PLEASE PARTICIPATE!

For More Information Contact Lisa Tafoya, Vice
President of Global Research FSA ltafoya_at_fsa.org
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Thank you for coming!