Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S5E31 Jad Allam | Manufacturing Yields, Growing Young Engineers, & Engineering Analytics
In this episode, Jad Allam discusses his journey into engineering, starting as a process engineer at Applied Medical and eventually becoming a Group Vice President. He shares his experiences in scaling up the Gen 2 Voyant device production, including the challenges faced and how his team overcame them. Jad also talks about his involvement in educational initiatives as the chairman of the board of the International School for Science and Culture.
Main Topics:
- Jad Allam's path to becoming an engineer
- His career progression at Applied Medical, from process engineer to Group Vice President
- The scaling up of the Gen 2 Voyant device production and the challenges encountered
- Jad's contributions to educational initiatives as the chairman of the board for the International School for Science and Culture
About the guest: Jad Allam is an accomplished Group Vice President at Applied Medical, specializing in product development, analytics, and finance. With over 16 years of experience, he has led cross-functional teams to enhance manufacturing efficiency and product quality. Jad's notable achievements include the development of the Gen 2 Voyant generators and devices, increasing their yield significantly and boosting profitability. He holds advanced degrees in Engineering and Operations Research and actively contributes to educational initiatives as Chairman of the Board for the International School for Science and Culture in Costa Mesa, CA.
Links:
Jad Allam - LinkedIn
About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
Hi everyone. We've set up this being an engineer podcast as an industry knowledge repository if you will, we hope it'll be a tool where engineers can learn about and connect with other companies technologies, people, resources and opportunities. So make some connections and enjoy the show.
Aaron Moncur:Hello, and welcome to another exciting episode of The being an engineer Podcast. Today we are privileged to speak with Jad Allam who is an accomplished groups Group Vice President at Applied medical specializing in product and process development. With over 16 years of experience, he has led cross functional teams to enhance manufacturing efficiency and product quality. Chad's notable achievements include the development of the gen 2 Voyant generators and devices, increasing their yield significantly and boosting profitability. He holds advanced degrees in engineering and operations research and actively contributes to educational initiatives. As chairman of the board for the International School for science and culture in Costa Mesa, California. Jad, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Jad Allam:Oh, thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it.
Aaron Moncur:You're welcome. So what made you decide to become an engineer?
Jad Allam:Well, while growing up, I remember asking a lot of questions a lot. I remember my mom saying one time, I'm not an encyclopedia. So please stop asking. Then she went and bought one the following week, so she
Aaron Moncur:If could only chat GPD existed back? I
Jad Allam:know, right at that time. Yeah. But no, honestly, I mean, my parents, my environment, encouraged me to ask questions. And my parents did the best they could to provide you the information that before the internet was was available to everyone. And as fast as today, right, with the modem and so on. Both of them are engineers. So that put me in that category right away. And I lost a lot of labels, honestly. So
Aaron Moncur:Awesome. Pretty typical for Yeah, engineering background. Right. Nice. So you are a Vice President right now. And you've been with the same company for I think, 16 years, something like that. Applied medical, and started off as a process engineer, can can you share with us a little bit about the journey of how you found your way to Applied Medical and then kind of the journey from process engineer to VP now?
Jad Allam:Yeah, absolutely. I started the company in 2007, we had three or four buildings on site. Part of the business model of appliance business model, what drew me to the company is the vertical integration. So we tend to bring processes in house on site, right? Today, just to forward in time, today, we have about 22 facilities on site and the business model, the business models still is the same thing. So from an engineering point of view, this is like having a giant playground of manufacturing capabilities, the ability to research, develop, prototype, different labs, and so on. Along the way, I was I was fortunate to have team leaders that provided me with opportunities to continue learning, nobody said, Oh, this is not your area, or no, you cannot ask questions, right. So whenever I see an opportunity to learn about a system, about process about a device or a different product, family, I was given the this information. And that's how I learned and how I grew. And I grew in my responsibilities as well. I continued learning about different regulatory considerations and new design methods, and new financial or it's nothing new about financial standards that I didn't have in my original background in engineering. In 2014, the wind product line was launched out applied and I had the opportunity to lead that team, that process thing. And since then, I've been growing with the product family growing the team and our capacity to build devices.
Aaron Moncur:Terrific. And as I understand your key instrumental in scaling up the production of this this Gen 2 Voyant device. Can you tell us what is this device first of all, and then what were some of your responsibilities in scaling it up? What What were some of the challenges that you and your team encountered? And how did you overcome them?
Jad Allam:Yeah, sure. Absolutely. As I tell everyone, I'm part of a team right? This credit is not to one person only it's we're all a team and applied and we we contribute to Due to the success of the product, family and organization, the void product family consists of a generator, which is a capital equipment that is placed in the O R, and disposable devices are connected to it. These devices at the main function is to seal vessels during different laparoscopic procedures or open surgeries, and transfer seen vessels or tissue bundles and transect them via mechanical blade. The sorts of bipolar device devices are Disposable single use generator is capital equipment. gen two specific specifically is the second generation of that product family that was launched in 2019. Gen one was launched end of 2014, early 2015. So five years later, we're able to come up with a second generation based on customer feedback based on improvements that we think we thought we can make with the devices and to be able to scale, right. With the development of release of new products after getting approval, regulatory approvals from the FDA, for example, and EU market, our goal is to get to market as soon as possible. With that said, we sometimes will release a product with some optimal yields, and high standard costs, right, which is fine. This allows us to gather feedback from the field. This allows us to see what the customers think of our product before investing way too much to build 50,000 of something somebody the customer, the end user does not like, right? What does that mean, from an engineering side? It means we have to start work. This is where the fun begins. This is where the cost improvement begins. design improvements began. We definitely have to hit from a business standpoint, we have to hit a certain gross profit margin, right? Which does us okay, yield has to be X amount. standard cost has to be at x amount, what do we need to change? Do we need to go from machining parts to molding them right to metal injection molding afterwards, maybe from what metal injection molding to stamping, for example, right? machining, as you know, takes a lot of time, a lot of labor. overheads, right for the machines, stamping can happen with, I don't know, 500 words a minute or more. So very low cost in that regard. But to reach that level, we need to either redesigned our product, we design our line, and we qualify. Right. So this is this is the big challenge and scaling up this this product. So we went from selling 500 devices a month to a few months ago. But we hit 30,000 devices a month. Wow. Yeah, this is about 15% market share. So we're getting getting
Aaron Moncur:congratulations. That's terrific. No,
Jad Allam:thank you. Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Can you think of a specific like a story or an incident as you started scaling up one of the roadblocks you encountered? That had to be overcome to get your yield up, get your, your your overall cost down? Anything in particular that you can share? In you know, whatever detail you're comfortable? Yeah,
Jad Allam:absolutely. The one big one is recruiting and hiring team members, both on the engineering side and the production side to be able to grow, right? If we're building with the numbers that I just mentioned, then we need from the engineering side, you need team members to be able to support these we always in production we have we have nonconformances, we have scrap we have operator errors and assembly, we have to revise our instructions, right? We need new molds, hired cavitation molds, and so on and so forth. So we need a strong team to support that. Team members would need some local leadership as well, right? Because we want to speed up document approval. We don't want to we don't want everyone to rely on one or two approvers for example, for document review, where everything's bottlenecks. Yes, we have all these ideas, all these projects, but we only have two reviewers of the company. We had that instance before I learned from it we learned so we have to train standardize training. Train the Trainer, so to speak, right? And then that's one one challenge. Another one is increasing regulatory requirements over the past five, six years in the medical device field You know, let me let me go back maybe six, seven years ago, we could make an improvement or a design change on a component, or easier manufacturability and maybe a month or two, with a certain set of deliverables. Nowadays, a similar project takes like a month, maybe 12. So this, I mean, I understand, I understand why there's increased requirements, right, for the safety of the patient safety of the end user a lot of risk assessment, environmental requirements and international markets and so on. But this is a challenge that we're facing today.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I've been hearing a lot about this over the past several years, the increasing regulatory requirements from the FDA to medical device companies. So going from two months to nine months, that's a that's a big change. That's a hard pill to swallow for companies like yours, I'm sure that nine month period, the additional, you know, seven months roughly what it is, is a lot of that just waiting for the FDA to approve things or or is a lot of that time taken up with actual work that your team has to be actively doing the whole time. Yeah,
Jad Allam:it's it's the latter. This example that I mentioned, does not require re approval or initial approval from the FDA. It's more deliverables that we have to tackle as address validation here address clinical research address risk assessment on the different levels, right, which didn't used to be this way before. Actually, if a project needs FDA approval, the wait time has improved from the FDA money to get in there to prepare the file to submit for that approval. That takes a long time.
Aaron Moncur:And this is the 510 K or PMA if it's a class one, yeah. Okay. Well, thinking about improving manufacturing efficiencies, are there any key strategies that you've implemented to help expedite that process?
Jad Allam:Yeah, I mean, the first and I would say the most important factor is the yield. With high scrap or low yield, that affects how many devices are or the throughput, right? It affects how long production is spending on a certain latch or certain shop order. It affects how many team members are needed to output a certain number of parts, right. And it's, it's a loss for the company, it's just a product that gets built doesn't pass inspection gets scrapped, is gone. So I would say from, from our team from the engineering team, the main focus to improve manufacturing efficiency is yield, what can we do? Why are we failing these devices? What is going wrong? And this actually, this is where we are fortunate at applied. Because when we start asking different questions, like the five why's method or follow different root cause analysis method, we don't hit a point where we say, Oh, we have to contact the vendor, or they're not going to get back to us for another two, three weeks. Right? So here, we're fortunate and okay, I need to find out the reason or the root cause I need to speak with someone with an SME for this product. Okay, let me walk across the street. They can look and this process, maybe try some stuff prototyping, right for root cause analysis, turn on turn off, turn on right to make sure that this is the right root cause. We have the ability to do that, to figure out what needs to happen. And as you know, figuring out what the problem is that's 50%, or even more than 50% of finding the solution. Yeah, yeah,
Aaron Moncur:I love what you're saying about the vertical integration there at applied, it just sounds like an engineers playground. I know that I'm always thinking about how can we accelerate the speed of engineering in our own team, right. And one of the area's I see, a lot of time wasted is maybe too strong a word to use, but spent at least is waiting for our suppliers to get back to us. You know, maybe we need whatever it is, we need this new material delivered or we need some kind of inspection performed or something like that. And you know, we're beholden to them for a week or two weeks until they get back to us. And to have all of that just in house where you can walk across the street and say, Hey, here's this thing. Can you help me with us today? Tomorrow? Wow, that what an amazing savings that must be not just in dollars but in time.
Jad Allam:Yeah, absolutely. You're absolutely right. I hear it's from from other from my call. colleagues have worked at different companies. And it's, it's like that it's a waste, especially if you're working with an international supplier. You're just waiting. And if they're, you're waiting for them to send you something, and it's not what you requested, studying.
Aaron Moncur:Wow, okay. Well, speaking of production yields and improving them, sometimes that requires a cross functional team, right? You maybe have a chemical engineers, some kind of SME, maybe there's someone from the production staff that's, that's part of that maybe there's an electrical person or biomedical person. Have, have there been any, any breakthroughs that your cross functional teams have achieved? And if you can think of an occurrence, kind of walk us through the process? How did that come to be?
Jad Allam:Yeah, sure. We are, we also have I've been mentioned that before, but we have our own internal automation team out apply, right? So once processes are stable and mature, right, meaning we can expect what the scrap to be we understand the different parameters that affect the process, automation is the next step. on working with vendors, when we start working with vendors to automate these processes, long lead time, we don't always get what we want. There are limitations that the vendors have based on their expertise, and so on. So that's why we have our own in house automation. With that said, One, Major, I mean, you can call it major breakthrough. But once we go to that automation step, the savings and the lead time, are grow exponentially. Decrease decreases, but the savings grow exponentially. The ability to scale up grows exponentially, right? So this is naturally how we move through processes after hand assembly and manual assembly and so on. It's automation. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:that makes total sense. Well, you're preaching to the choir here. That's what we do is automation. So I love it. Keep keep, keep talking about that. What are some things that you have done to foster a culture of continuous improvement in your teams? Yeah.
Jad Allam:During one on ones, one of the first questions I asked the members not not every week, but it's do you feel challenged? Or used to learn? Right? If they don't believe they are, we have to find why. And we have to identify new areas for them to learn from, whether it's a new process a new device, you project or transfer to a different thing, right? Because we have all these capabilities in house there is that opportunity to transfer for lateral transition? So I believe when I asked this question, it makes the team member really think like, okay, am I just doing the routine work? Or is there something that I'm learning? Because if they don't, that doesn't lead to a good outcome or afterwards, right. Also, in house, we have an internal training and development team, right? They create courses, curriculum about different subjects from stamping, for example, or Springs Manufacturing to basic company finances, right? Leadership essentials, or how to conduct a meeting, we do hire fresh graduate engineers that have not been part of a professional setting, right, there's just maybe they don't have some of the arity with how to conduct meetings. So all in all, team members are encouraged to sign up for these courses and learn from them. What else we also review, we set and review periodically, the one year plan for each team member, at least on our team, to make sure they're progressively getting larger scope assignments, right to meet their strength, their interests and and the team's needs. Yeah, I mean, with these, with these different methods, I'm the hope is nobody gets bored, right? Because I know that that boredom and not feeling challenged, leads to team members becoming disengaged, right, and maybe negatively impacting their peers and ultimately, they'll start looking for another job.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, that's very insightful. I love those questions. Are you feeling challenged? That's, that's terrific. And I can definitely see how that would lead to a strong culture where where people are feeling fulfilled, and there's just I mean, like Like you said, if you're learning, if you're continuously learning something, you're going to be a lot less likely to get bored and start looking for something else. So it just builds longevity in your team members. That's terrific. All right, you in your LinkedIn profile mentioned, data analytics, what what role has analytics played in your decision making process? And are there any examples that you can share?
Jad Allam:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, engineering, engineering and data goes hand in hand. It's, we heavily rely on data on making like day to day decisions, right? As well as for strategic plans, five year plans or so on. Some examples, we rely on statistics like IMR chart, right to monitor our processes to determine if the process fits within consist of within the control limits, as it's hitting the upper control limit, lower control limit, which put maybe alert levels beforehand how we're going to what are we going to do? Like, should we stop? Should we not to bring it back in control? To not right? We use other statistical tools include Gage r&r, when we're validating test methods, right, we definitely, we have to make sure our test methods and our inspections can detect conforming versus non conforming devices. Some of our devices have higher risk than others, and they have to go through rigorous testing. So we have to definitely rely on data for that. Other examples are the estimated completion dates of projects directly impacts how we manage inventory, right from the business level, for example, if we're bringing a component in house, from purchasing it from a vendor to bring it in house, we want to we don't want to buy from the vendor, two years worth of inventory of the project is closing in two or three months, right? It doesn't make sense, right? So we have to coordinate see, okay, what is the risk and delays for this? What is the cost of inventory? Even if we have extra inventory? Is it okay to scrap it? For example? What is the consumption? Are there new product development or new areas where this material is going to be used from the vendors? This is gonna go waste? Can we use it in a different process? All this was we have to collect that that information, and then move forward with that. So these are few few examples.
Aaron Moncur:For Perfect, yeah, great examples. Well, I'll take just a short pause here and share with everyone that the being an engineer podcast is brought to you by pipeline design, and engineering where we don't design pipelines, but we do help companies develop advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines, and custom fixtures complemented with product design and r&d services. Learn more at Team pipeline.us. The podcast is also sponsored by the wave, an online platform of free tools, education and community for engineers learn more at the wave dot engineer. Today, we have the privilege of speaking with Jad Allam. So Jad, let's talk a little bit about product development and how how it aligns with market needs and how you determine what that alignment is. I mean, how do you make sure that the products you're developing are something that the market wants to buy it, I want to share just some real quick, I heard a podcast with Seth Godin recently, Seth Godin, for those of you who don't know him is kind of a marketing guru. He's written quite a few books out there. And someone asked him, like for his number one tip on business or something like that. I can't remember exactly what it was. But his his answer was so just beautifully succinct. He says, make sure you're selling, make sure you're selling something that people want to buy. And it's, I mean, it seems so obvious, but like, How many times do we miss that? Right? It was just so beautifully short and concise and simple. Make sure you're selling something that people want to buy. So how does your team or the applied medical team ensure that you're selling something people want to buy? Yeah,
Jad Allam:I mean, 100%, exactly, as you said, it starts with what to end users or what do customers need? Right. So we as an engineering team, we work hand in hand with the clinical development team, who's responsible for visiting hospitals, speaking with surgeons, speaking with nurses, getting feedback about our products and potentially new products, new, innovative, innovative products. acts that do not exist, maybe they need a solution for an application that they they use right? During surgery. So that's where it all starts. Now, that's great, because we also, we found out that a lot of surgeons have a lot of ideas. We would with the help, the different teams, engineering, clinical and so on, we prioritize, right. Okay, this, this makes sense. This doesn't make sense. We hear about this from international markets more we hear about this domestically more. And at the end of the day, it has to make sense from a business standpoint, as well. Well, okay, yeah, we can we can make this device? And then what is it gonna cost us more to make it just to fulfill this or not? So all these discussions happen at the beginning. But as you mentioned, it has to, we are regularly throughout the project, we have to make sure that we're still on the right track, right. So whether it's through definitely through prototyping at the beginning, we have medical experts that we partner with that regularly review certain projects, especially for new product development, and give us feedback, right. Throughout that that development phase, we make improvements to the design, most of the manufacturing at that point, not not quite, but it's mostly to the design and to the functionality of the product. We assess the risk. Throughout the project, that FDA is big on that actually all and EU as well, because that risk assessment can also drive design changes and design updates. So it doesn't necessarily impact the functionality, but it changes how we can meet this requirement, right? Different different areas. The ultimate validation is a phase throughout the development phase is called design validation. This is where we actually build devices, that our production like devices with production, like manufacturing processes, and take these devices to the field and let surgeons actually test them, right, they do pass all clears all biocompatibility clearance, artwork, labeling, and so on so they can be sought after this item is checked. But this is the ultimate, but to reach that a lot of investment would have been made already in tooling, and molds and machines and setting up lines in the cleanroom trained team members coming up with the necessary documentation. So yeah, if we reach a design validation phase, and that doesn't pass, that's not good. So right, so we definitely do that throughout the project via through different phases.
Aaron Moncur:You mentioned risk assessment, and that being something that's ongoing throughout the development and manufacturing phases. There are tools, of course, to perform risk assessment, FMEA, being probably one of the primary tools. But even these tools are reliant on people to add the correct inputs, and people are fallible, right, we all make mistakes, we all miss things. Has there been a situation where your team is filling out the FMEA? And you think, yep, we've got everything we've we've identified all the different risks, we've labeled them, we understand what the outcomes will be, we're addressing them. And then you get I don't know, two thirds of the way through the project, or maybe even it well into manufacturing and realize, oh, no, there's this other risk that we just, we just missed. We didn't we didn't know about it at the time. But now for whatever reason we we see that there's this additional risk. Has that ever happened? And if so, how do you how do you deal with that?
Jad Allam:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it happens. I wouldn't say often, but it does, it does happen maybe 50% of the time now, with the items that we missed, or that we don't know about their impact might not be as high right? Items that we miss with high impact that's less less often, I would say right? We do rely on experts, internal and external to help us through this assessment, especially if it's a new area. It's a new market if you want that us as a company we don't have experience with right yeah, we so we do rely on gathering the right information and as much information as as possible. from a process standpoint, be FMEA for example, Well, the risk is an additional tool, right? That's the most expensive thing or the the need for additional equipment or different type of equipment, or different process altogether. Let's say we selected a material and we're going to mold it. But then after high heat during the functionality of the device that doesn't perform as expected, going back to changing this material and finding a new one, and then adjusting the shrink rate of this new material, and then making new tools for that, and adjusting the machines to be able to mold this new material. That's cumbersome. That puts the project back six, nine months or so. Right? Yeah. From a design FMEA or use FMEA point of view. It's through the different product, I think it's through the medical experts, we do rely on them to like, Look, your surgeon has 25 years of experience periodically, and then yeah, they're responsible to let us know, if not we find someone from the different field or who we're trying to target to give us this information. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:it's great. I'm curious to hear your thoughts about how you define the word process within the context of of manufacture you started as a process engineer. And you've been involved heavily with manufacturing processes over the years and growing those processes refining those processes. i It's a little embarrassing to admit now. But it took me a little while after I started my career as an engineer to to really understand what people meant when they were talking about process. And I thought, what process what process? What is this process that everyone keeps talking about? And finally, you know, slowly dawned on me that, oh, it's manufacturing. That's what we're talking about. I mean, it's not completely synonymous, but it's largely synonymous with with manufacturing. If you were speaking to a new engineer, or maybe a lay person outside of engineering altogether, how would you describe or define this? This this idea of process?
Jad Allam:In my opinion, it's a set of steps, or instructions that are that would lead to an expected outcome. Whether it's making medical devices, whether it's making the laundry at home, it's, these are the instructions with the defined inputs as well. So if we have the raw materials that we need, if we have the specifications, which come in the form of drawing, right, that we need. And we have that last component, which is the steps to put these together, what do we do with this raw material, this assembly of raw materials? How do we do it? What equipment do we use, we shouldn't be able to repeat it. X amount of time, right? To get to get an expected out that
Aaron Moncur:I love that. It reminds me of how I have thought about the word system for a long time, it pretty much the same definition that you just gave it is how I have defined system in the past to myself and to others. And now it makes me wonder what's the difference between a system and a process? And maybe it's just semantics at that point? Or maybe you could say that a system uses processes? I'm not sure I'm probably just into the weeds at this point.
Jad Allam:That's the same. I agree with you to me.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, you you're in a leadership role, and you have been for some time, what are a couple of your favorite leadership principles that you found to be most effective in driving team performance?
Jad Allam:I have my role, which is on paper, this is your responsibility. This is what you have to do. But to me, I define my role as, as a coach and mentor and someone who develops tries to develop independent decision makers, right, whether they're individual contributors, or team leaders themselves, or even members on other teams, right. And, in my opinion, having independent decision makers locally, right, speeds up the process prophecy, speeds up decisions, lowers the risk, right? Of having long directions or multiple changes of directions. If one one team leader says Oh, no, we're we're doing it this way. Hang on, we're selecting this material or no, we need five team members to assemble this. This handle, for example, or so on, then no, no, no, hold on, we need them. Let's go invest more, let's let's make another machine $200,000, or whatever it is. So it's educating team members and coaching them to take different points into consideration to make the right decision. And I truly believe making a decision, even if there's a risk for it not to be the right decision is better. And spending die without any decision. not moving at all.
Aaron Moncur:Well said Well said, I remember I had a boss early on, I think it was my first engineering job ever. I was an intern actually still going to school. And my boss was telling me about how he got hired at this company. And he said, he interviewed with the president of the company, and told him that I know how to make a decision. It might not always be the right decision, but I can make a decision. And I remember thinking to myself, at the time was a very young, inexperienced engineer, why would why in the world would you say something like that, that it might not be the right decision? You know, you have to make the right decisions, obviously. And of course, as I've gotten older and older, I realized that, you know, you don't always make the right decision. But yeah, the ability to make a decision and move forward is almost always going to be more productive than just, you know, vacillating back and forth, back and forth. I have a quote on my wall at at home in my home office that says, Oh, I have to think about it now. Well, it's it's when in doubt, assume you're right. decisiveness is productive. Oh, no. And I, I thought that think that's so great. You know, when a doubt, assume you're right, decisiveness is productive. And I've certainly found that to be the case. You also were talking about mentoring and growing your engineering team. And it made me think about a conversation I had with my son just the other night, we were talking about school and you know, grades, he's in high school, and he's very aware of the the grades he's getting, and how though those might lead to his ability to get into college or not to get into college. And so we're talking about that. And I said, you know, the grades are important, you know, you should certainly get good grades. But but really, at the end of the day, what this world needs is more problem solvers, not more task completers. And, and so I had, in fact, several years back we, we dug a pool in our backyard, we put a pool in and the digging company came in and said, Okay, before we can dig, we need you to take all the grass out, right? So dig all the grass out, and then let us know, we'll come and we'll dig can't remember why now they needed to take the grass out. Anyway, I hired a landscaper and said, Hey, I need you to come take all this grass out. So our digging company can come in and put a giant hole in the backyard. And this landscaper said no problem. You know, we only have hand tools. We've got shovels and pickaxes. And I think we can probably get down three or four inches with the tools that we have. And that should be enough to get the grass out and said, Okay, that's fine. But But really, the problem I'm hiring you to solve is to take the grass out not to dig three or four inches down. So I just need you to get the grass out and says now shouldn't be a problem with three or four inches should do it. So okay, great. Hire him. Next day, I come home from work, and I go into the backyard. And lo and behold, there's still grass there, right? Sure enough, they've taken three or four inches out, but there's still grass there. And I call him up and I'm like, Hey, what's going on? There's still grass here. And he says, Well, I don't know, we took three or four inches out, right? And I'm like, Come on, man, I didn't hire you to take three or four inches out, I hired you to take the grass out. So anyway, that the point is, what the world needs is is problem solvers, not task completers. And if we can train our up and coming generation of engineers, not just to complete tasks, but to solve problems met what what a great world that will be for all of us.
Jad Allam:Absolutely not. Sorry to hear that. Sorry to hear that. Yeah, but you're 100% Right. I mean, they they knew it seems like they knew to do one thing. This is right. And whether it's works for you or not, this is what we're Exactly. I'm gonna I was told to do this thing. So I'm gonna do this thing. Beyond that. I don't care. No, but but I'm doing this thing. Yeah, exactly.
Aaron Moncur:Well, let's see here. What kind of advice would you give young engineers who want to get into the medical device industry?
Jad Allam:The big one is be ready for documentation. Yeah. As a highly regulated field, documenting requirements, design and process specifications, test methods, results. valuations qualifications, risk assessments, you name it, it's part of our day to day life. Right? Yeah. So that's, that's the big one. On the other hand, a career and the medical device field can be satisfying can be satisfying. I mean, part of the feedback that we receive, it's not always complaints, right? And a complaint is a big thing and actually a eyes or you're receiving this feedback, what are you doing about it? How are you responding? How fast are you responding, right, and recalls, and so on. But part of the feedback that we receive is how our devices helped patients during surgery, how some of them saved lives, or the reduced recovery time for someone that can go in, get a procedure done with one of our wound retractors. For example, two hours later, they're back home. Right? No infection or minimal risk of infection, we have saved that, and so on. But hearing this feedback, when especially when we're working on a device on a new device that just got released, or an ongoing device that's been with the company for 20 years, getting this feedback is a reward to all the work that we put end to make sure we deliver and release quality products to the field.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, that's how fulfilling, right for medical device engineers who worked on that product. Wonderful. Well, let's see, I think we're getting towards the end, maybe we'll just do one or two more questions. And then and then wrap things up. What is what's one thing that you have done to accelerate the speed of engineering?
Jad Allam:The main thing is being hands on. Whether it's observing processes, speaking to production team members, or from from a new product, point of view, is speaking to surgeons, attending cases and so on, I believe. And I apply, I tried to apply and being hands on. So not sitting at my desk, and then relying on what I hear or the emails that I get, or the team's chatter, and so on. I honestly I rarely sit down. Because, again, everything's on site. Let me go speak with people. And we go observe what's going on. And we go attend this meeting, or two meetings, or so on to get a feel. Are we on the right track? Are we not on the right track? Is there something that I can help with, from my experience from something that I've seen before and projects, right? Yes, I know, the default task is to do X, Y, and Z and to build a prototype batch, then a development batch and then do this, guys. We have 100 devices that were scrapped sitting in a cubicle. Can we use them? Can we use them for testing? Oh, yeah, sure. All right, we're done. Right. I mean, small items like that, honestly, today, this morning, I was a security. So it's just small items like that. I believe it's very important for any team leader or anyone to just be hands on go and see what's going on, not just rely and listen and make decisions and given guidance based on what what you hear.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, you know, I could not agree with you more the importance of being hands on, whether that's physically hands on, or just in the same room watching, observing what's happening. It's so interesting to me that, you know, I've been an engineer in engineering now for over 20 years. And I like to think at least that I've learned a couple of things during that time. And I'll observe another a younger engineer, maybe that's working on something. And there will be things that are so obvious to me that, you know, why are you doing that way? Do it this way? Or Or here's, here's another option, or just, here's another way to think about it. And we're all in different points along our growth trajectories, right. So it's not, it's not reasonable to expect a young junior engineer to have the same experience that someone older has. But leadership is, is so important, because it allows us to accelerate the speed of engineering. If we just had younger engineers that didn't have that experience, then things wouldn't get done so quickly. And I hope it doesn't sound like I'm being disparaging towards younger engineers. I was a younger engineer myself, a long time ago, and I made a lot of these mistakes, and to have older, more experienced senior engineering leaders that can come in and say, That's a good try. I liked your thought. Here's maybe another option to consider or have you thought about doing it this way? It can. It's It's incredible how much having that dynamic to the senior leadership engineer involved hands on at the processing. It's incredible how much that can speed things up and accelerate the overall process of of engineering.
Jad Allam:Yeah, exactly right now.
Aaron Moncur:All right. Well, Jad, thank you so much for being with us today. What a great conversation this has been. Thank you for sharing your experience and wisdom with us. Anything else that you'd like to share before we sign off today?
Jad Allam:Not much. I mean, it's I see my career and my trajectory so far, as I'm very fortunate, right to, to have had good leaders. Honestly, I hear a lot about stories where, Oh, somebody's facing challenges with their team leader, right. Somebody's facing challenges with what they're doing. But I enjoyed what I do. And I'm still challenged. I'm still learning. Right? So. Yeah, as you said, we all started as fresh graduate engineers not knowing what to do. And just ask us questions. It's fine to, it's not easy to have that self confidence and to go and ask questions and put yourself out there and a new job. But that's what I would always recommend to others.
Aaron Moncur:Wonderful, wonderful. Well, Jad, how can people get in touch with you?
Jad Allam:The Easiest way is through LinkedIn. just message me or send a notification or so on and I'll get back to you.
Aaron Moncur:Terrific. All right. Well, thank you so much, again, for being on the being an engineer podcast.
Jad Allam:Thank you so much. It was great chatting with you. Thanks.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design, and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode. To learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures complemented with product design and r&d services. Visit us at Team pipeline.us. To join a vibrant community of engineers online, visit the wave dot engineer. Thank you for listening
