Design Clever

[tomparryharry]

Rather than go into (or onto) the other threads, I thought I'd share some thoughts about 'design clever' principles...

 

For example, some years back, our foundry used to make motor car wheels, in cast aluminium. The 'flash' from the casting process was a huge problem, as it conflicted with the automatic lathes, which produced the tyre bead portion of the wheel. The upshot was that we employed an army of fettlers, whose job it was to remove said flash, before the wheel castings went to the automatic turning shop.

 

The background costs were significant, as time & effort were expended in this operation. The answer was to re-design & improve the tooling, to actually move the flash portion to a different part of the casting, where it didn't interfere with the auto shop settings, and the auto lathe itself cleaned off the flash, as part of the turning operation.

 

Hey presto! 25 fettlers per shift, down to 2 fettlers per shift. 'Design Clever' at work.

 

Design Clever can take many forms, and its usually the engineering function of the product delivery process that starts the ball rolling. The chances are that you might not actually see any direct benefit of 'Design Clever', as the company is looking to shave off percentage points in the background costs. Marketing types normally latch onto new processes, as it gives them an 'angle'

 

Rather than debate the pros & cons of 'Design Clever', I'd much rather wait until you see the finished product. If its good-buy it. If not-don't buy. Simple as that, really.

 

Regards,

Ian

 

PS. 'Design Clever' gave us The Swindon No1 boiler.....

[Xerces Fobe2]

Design Clever = Continuous Design Improvement

 

Just a new name for something that has being around since cavemen starting using tools!

 

XF

[Mod6]

This subject has been covered extensively in the Hornby 2013 announcements topic.  Nevertheless, there may be some useful points to discuss in respect to applications elsewhere, both inside and outside the railway modelling industry, so I am moving it out of the Hornby subforum.  But please don't just regurgitate the arguments that have already been made in the Hornby topic.

[The Stationmaster]

Perhaps one of the best railway examples was the Riddles 'Austerity 2-8-0 where 'cleverness' in design meant a change in methods to offer simpler construction and maintenance to suit rough & ready operational conditions and the need for rapid construction.  These locos are perhaps a good illustration that 'cleverness' can be driven by more than one criterion and can go in more than one direction (in this case with, among other things, fabrication replacing castings).

['CHARD]

I have been trying to find the accurate data for the value engineering (VE) exercise that resulted in the massive simplification of the MCW Metrobus from its MkI guise to the MkII evolution.

 

Now that I've just typed value engineering, it occurs to me that it's what we used to call 'design clever,' isn't it?

[BG John]

Isn't it just good engineering, maybe with some input from a cost accountant, rather than not so good engineering?

[Ceptic]

Thinking back to when I was involved in natural gas filtration, a shop-floor process, to produce a simple pipe branch consisted of four, preliminary, stages.

 

1. Cut blank

2. Affix cutting template / set profiler / cut to shape.

3. De-burr / de-slag.

4. Roll to dia.

 

 After many years of going down this road, a decision was made, to bring in an outside contractor who could supply Laser profiled, consistent, clean, flat blanks, ready for rolling,...Thus eliminating, in-house stages 1 2 & 3.

 

Companies, particularly British, should move with the times and improve output.....but....and.... it's a big but....skills are lost, along the way...

[brushman47544]

I have been trying to find the accurate data for the value engineering (VE) exercise that resulted in the massive simplification of the MCW Metrobus from its MkI guise to the MkII evolution.

 

Or in other words a case of "de-Londoning it", i.e. removing the London Transport specific requirements incorporated into the Mk1 design to make it affordable elsewhere?

[TheSignalEngineer]

I have been trying to find the accurate data for the value engineering (VE) exercise that resulted in the massive simplification of the MCW Metrobus from its MkI guise to the MkII evolution.

 

Now that I've just typed value engineering, it occurs to me that it's what we used to call 'design clever,' isn't it?

I thought that "Design Clever" was the process whereby you decided what part of the original brief you could leave out without the client noticing.

[Xerces Fobe2]

I thought that "Design Clever" was the process whereby you decided what part of the original brief you could leave out without the client noticing.

 No that's "Design Cunning"!

 

XF

[The Stationmaster]

I thought that "Design Clever" was the process whereby you decided what part of the original brief you could leave out without the client noticing.

 

We tried doing that with the track layout and signalling for St Pancras International after the client complained that what we were planning (exactly to his specification of course) would be too expensive.  So we reduced it to what would actually  be needed to run the train service spec (when we could get that to stand still for more than a day on the MML side) and the client did notice that the cost was reduced massively but I don't think they took much notice of anything else as they then changed the spec for some of it.  

[TheSignalEngineer]

We tried doing that with the track layout and signalling for St Pancras International after the client complained that what we were planning (exactly to his specification of course) would be too expensive.  So we reduced it to what would actually  be needed to run the train service spec (when we could get that to stand still for more than a day on the MML side) and the client did notice that the cost was reduced massively but I don't think they took much notice of anything else as they then changed the spec for some of it.  

 I had a similar experience on West Coast where the client asked me to look at someone's figures for a job as it looked expensive, and to suggest alternatives. I broadly agreed with the other contractors' figure for the full spec but pointed out that 50% of the service couldn't make full use of the speeds requested and for the rest it would be possible to get 90% of the gain for only 30% of the expenditure.

[rob D2]

looking at most of my projects, I have a new concept. It's called designdumbass....