From a friend - considering that this Wednesday's I'm blogging about designing experiments in research grant proposals, this seemed appropriate - it works this way in research, too.
A Toastal Story
By Jack Ganssle (former Honeywell engineer) - written in
1997
Day 1. My boss, an engineer from the old pre-CAD days, has
successfully brought a generation of products from Acme Toaster Corporation's
engineering labs to market. Bob is a wonder of mechanical ingenuity. All of us
in the design department have the utmost respect for him, so I was honored
today when he appointed me the lead designer on the new Acme 2000 Toaster.
Finally, after 4 years of undergrad work in mechanical
engineering at MIT, and almost a decade working in the appliance group here at
Acme, they've recognized my talents and have given me the responsibility I've
yearned for. I'm excited about this challenge.
Day 6. We met with the president, head of sales, and the
marketing VP today to hammer out the project's requirements and specifications.
We agreed to meet a cost of goods of $9.50 in quantities of 100,000. I've
identified the critical issue in the new design: a replacement for the timing
spring we've used since the original 1922 model. Research with focus groups
shows that consumers set high expectations for their breakfast foods. Cafe Late
from Starbucks goes best with a precise level of toastal browning. The Acme
2000 will give our customers the breakfast experience they desire.
I estimated a design budget of $21,590 for this project,
and final delivery in 7 weeks. I'll need one assistant designer to help with
the drawing packages. This is my first chance to supervise! I'm looking forward
to making the hire and mentoring this person.
Like all Acme meetings we reached these decisions by
consensus. The company is family owned and is operated, well, I guess the best
word is "gently." The little friction that occurs is always resolved
fairly. We work hard but in harmony. It's a place I hope to retire from in 30
years, as my father did.
Day 23. We've found the ideal spring material. Best of all,
it's a well-proven technology. Our projected cost of goods is almost a
buck-fifty under goal. The rough prototype (completed in just 12 days from the
go-ahead!) has been servicing the employee cafeteria for the last week without
a single hiccup. Toastal quality exceeds projections. There's still a lot of work
ahead, as we do the production engineering that is so important to producing a
reliable product.
Day 24. That block of Acme stock sold to the Mackenzie
family in the 50s was just snapped up by a major aerospace company which had
run out of defense contractors to acquire. At a company-wide meeting we were
assured that this was an investment only, and that nothing will change. They
will send in a couple of auditors, but this is just to help us find ways to do
things more efficiently.
Day 30. I showed the Acme 2000's exquisitely crafted
toastal timing mechanism to Ms. Primrose, the new engineering auditor today.
The single spring and four interlocking lever arms are a thing of beauty. I
wonder if her constant sniffing annoys the others as much as it does me?
Day 36. The design is complete. We're starting a prototype
run of 500 toasters tomorrow. I'm starting to wrap up the engineering effort.
My new assistant did a wonderful job. We're cleaning up the drawings and
getting ready for our next project.
Day 38. Suddenly a major snag. Bob called me into his
office. He seemed very uneasy as he informed me that those "on-high"
feel the Acme 2000 is obsolete. Something about using springs in the silicon
age.
I reminded Bob that the consultants had looked at using a
microprocessor, but figured an electronic design would exceed our cost target
by almost 50% with no real benefit in terms of toastal quality. "With a
computer our customer can load the bread the night before, program a finish time,
and be presented with the perfect slice of toast when he awakens", Bob
intoned as if reading from a script.
Day 48. Chuck Compguy, the new microprocessor whiz,
scrapped my idea of using a 4 bit dedicated CPU. "We need some horsepower
if we're gonna program this puppy in C," he extolled, while I stared
fascinated at the old crumbs stuck in his wild beard. "Time-to-market, you
know. Delivery is due in 3 months. We'll just pop this cool new 8 bitter into
it, whip up some code, and ship to the end-user."
"What's an 'end-user'?" I muttered as I headed
back to the office, wondering what had happened to our original schedule.
Day 120. The good news is that I'm getting to stretch my
mechanical design abilities. Chuck convinced management that the old
spring-loaded press-down lever control is obsolete. I've designed a
"motorized insertion port", stealing ideas from a CD-ROM drive. Three
cross-coupled safety interlock microswitches insure the heaters won't come on
unless toast is properly inserted. We're seeing some reliability problems due
to the temperature extremes, but I'm sure we can work those out.
Day 132. New schedule; delivery now expected in three
months. We've replaced the 8 bitter with a Harvard Architecture 16 bit 3 MIPs
CPU. Yesterday Bob spent over an hour yelling at the engineering team. Chuck
just shrugged his shoulders and whispered "This always happens." I
hope Bob is OK; maybe he's just short on sleep.
Day 172. New schedule; delivery now expected in three
months. Bob spends a lot of time throwing stuff in the lab. For the first time
I've actually been working weekends. I mentioned it to Chuck and he mumbled
"Saturday? Saturday? It's Saturday? So what, we always work
weekends."
Day 194. The auditors convinced management we really need a
GUI with a full-screen LCD. "You're gonna need some horsepower to drive
that," Chuck warned us. "I recommend a 386 with a half-meg of
RAM." He went back to design Rev J of the PCB. Bob is starting to look a
lot like Dilbert's boss, even to the hair sticking up vertically.
Day 268. We've cured most of the electronics' temperature
problems with a pair of fans, though management is complaining about the noise.
Bob sits in his office all day, door locked, drinking Jack Daniels. Like
clockwork his wife calls every night around midnight, sobbing. I'm worried
about him, and mentioned this to Chuck. "Wife? Wife? Yeah, I think I've
got one of those, and 2 or 3 kids too. Now let's just stick another meg of RAM
in here, OK?"
Day 290. New schedule; delivery now expected in three months.
Chuck has gained even more weight; his teeshirts are ripped, though I'm not
sure if that's from the extra flab or from stiffening caused by congealing
food.
We gave up on the custom GUI and are now installing Windows
CE. The auditors applauded Chuck's plan to upgrade to a Pentium with 32 Mb of
RAM. There's still no functioning code, but the toaster is genuinely
impressive. Four circuit boards, bundles of cables, and a Gb of hard disk.
"This sucker has more computer power than the entire world did 20 years
ago," Chuck boasts proudly.
Day 340. The toast application sometimes starts but often
gives General Protection Faults. The auditors are considering Chuck's solution
- have the end-user call in the GPF address to our new toll-free support line.
We'll send the end-user a complementary slice of bread.
Day 384. New schedule; delivery now expected in three
months. Toastal quality is sub-par. The addition of two more cooling fans keeps
the electronics to a reasonable temperature, but removes too much heat from the
toast. I'm struggling with baffles to vector the air, but the thrust of all
these fans spins the toaster around.
Bob seems worse. All day long we hear him keening
"Kill them all! Kill them all!!!!...." After the acquisition our
medical plan was downgraded so there's little help available for him.
"I've seen it all before," Chuck confided in me, "I told 'em not
to remove the mental health benefits."
Day 410. We switched from C++ to Java. "That'll get
them pesky memory allocation bugs, for sure" Chuck told his team of 15
programmers. This seems like a good idea to me, since Java is platform
independent, and there are rumors circulating that we're porting to a
Sparc-workstation.
Day 480. New schedule; delivery now expected in three
months, just as soon as we get those last few bugs resolved. To reduce power
consumption the computer now sequences fans alternately, but this seems to
cause toastal burning during Java's garbage collection phase. Chuck has assured
us that a new release of the Virtual Machine is almost due, which will probably
cure this problem.
The carted Bob off on a stretcher today. It's a shame all
of the new hires in engineering never got to know him in his prime. They
watched sullenly as the paramedics wheeled him out, muttering things like
"Another one down. They'll never take me out like that."
Day 530. I mastered the temperature problems by removing
all of the fans and the heating elements. The Pentium is now thermally bonded
to the toast. We found a thermal grease that isn't too poisonous. Our marketing
people feel the slight degradation in taste from the grease will be more than
compensated for by the "toasting experience that can only come from a
CISC-based 32 bit multitasking machine running the latest multi-platform
software."
We're having some problems with the TCP/IP suite Chuck's
networking group (now up to 23 programmers) wrote. Management agreed to
purchase a commercial package, though our royalty costs for various software
components is already up to $23 per toaster.
His OS department figured out how to get real time software
upgrades downloaded with hardly any effect on toastal quality. They're trying
to reduce boot time to 10 minutes.
The user's manual is taking shape. The product
documentation team has done a tremendous job, producing a 4 color 700 page
manual in only twice the time anticipated.
When I asked what we'll do with all of these developers
after the product ships, Chuck told me "why, move them to the help desks,
of course! Plus, we'll need a decent sized group for bug fixes."
Day 610. Delivery date unknown. Bob slipped away from the
asylum last night and managed to insert a virus into our network. As I left
work this morning the police were dragging him away, cackling and screaming
with a maniacal grin on his face.
The virus destroyed all of our software. "I meant to
tell them to start a version control team," Chuck mumbled. "Well,
this is really good news. I have some great ideas on how to improve the code.
It always pays to toss out version 1 anyway."
Editor's note: This diary was found clutched in Mr.
Widget's hand after his body was recovered from the fire. Acme's press
spokesman's commented "we sincerely regret Mr. Widget's suicide, but
remain committed to the best in toastal quality through the use of the latest
technology." In related news, Mr. Charles Compguy was made Acme's
CEO today.
Actually this explains the running cost increases on the Atlas V and Delta IV over the last.few years.
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