The Illusion of Accuracy

With many calculation tools whether CAE or FEA or even basic predictive tools, the illusion of accuracy is core to the business (and truly yet another thing to drive this self proclaimed die-expert up a wall). Yes, the Illusion of Accuracy. Take for example an online Body-Mass-Index calculator. Typical inputs to the BMI for simple [...]

Stamping Engineering and FEA role in it

A faulty paradigm I am currently dealing with-in attempts to bring Sheet Metal Stamping Technology Solutions to the market-is the perception that FEA tools (my companies primary product line) are merely go or no-go decision tools, and that the users should use them to Pass/Fail the designs in front of them. But how true is [...]

Nothing from me today just a good thought that I wish I had put down first

Active Inertia? Food for thought

Driving internal communications

Paradox: a statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition Tech: “Why don’t we have a knowledge base where I can look up solutions to my issues for support?” Manager: “Did you look in ____________ (name of some in house system).” Tech: “No, there is absolutely no [...]

Geek to geek communications

As a product manager in a technology company I wonder how often I get caught in “geek-to-geek” mode of promotion of our solutions. After all when speaking on the geek level it is very easy to find that we are focused on the latest greatest widget/function/button we have added to the software and not on [...]

Kickstarting the economy (virally)

so what if? My idea is to enlist the help of the benevolent hacker (ok there might not be such a thing). Get this hacker who most likely as already 100-200 thousand machines already sleeper slaved via some seemingly innocuous worm, to wake those machines and have them fill out consumer confidence surveys worldwide. You [...]

The “Bigger Picture”, “no” and other management no-no’s

Recently, with no sense of irony, a friend was shut down by his manager, being told to mind the “bigger” picture. Essentially, communicating to all that what the manager has to say matters and what you say does not. Without getting to specific about the situation, it seems to me that the manager is actually [...]

Change–still difficult to sell amid these hard times

If any of the variables (pain, gain, input, or alternatives) go to zero then resistance in infinite. In preparation to an upcoming product management workshop I am preparing for my sales colleagues I tried to define (again) how we are supposed to get our customers and prospects to accept new ideas on how our (or [...]

Automation in software

stuck on a couple of fundamental issues in regards to the level of Automation in software applications (we are an engineering software house). When using a software application that attempts to propose, predict, develop automatically, how do most of us prefer to have the results presented to us? For example: if the software attempts to [...]