Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S5E32 Todd Mansfield | Integrated Project Management (OneIPM), Agile Methodologies, and Construction Automation
In this episode, Aaron Moncur interviews Todd Mansfield. They discuss Todd's career journey, his work at companies like House of Design Robotics and Echo Safety Group, and his current role at OneIPM, where he focuses on integrated project management solutions. They cover topics such as the benefits of OneIPM's seamless integration with Onshape, the future of CAD software, the use of Agile methodologies in hardware teams, and strategies for accelerating engineering speed.
Main Topics:
- Todd Mansfield's engineering career path and integrated project management solutions
- Integrated project management software for CAD and non-CAD users, with seamless Onshape integration
- Onshape's integration with OneIPM for real-time collaboration and project management
- CAD software and its future in the industry
- Automation in the construction industry, product development, and high volume product launches
- Agile development, team collaboration, and streamlining product development
- Accelerating engineering speed with OneIPM
About the guest: Todd Mansfield is a seasoned product development leader with over 25 years of experience, known for his strategic growth and innovation in various industries. Currently, he is the Vice President of Product at OneIPM, where he focuses on integrated project management solutions. Todd's career spans multiple leadership roles, including President and COO at House of Design Robotics and VP of Global Engineering at ECCO Safety Group. He holds degrees in Applied Technology, Computer Aided Manufacturing Technology, and Aircraft Maintenance Technology from Boise State University and Idaho State University.
Links:
Todd Mansfield - 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
In addition to not app switching because it's using the same data, it's extremely advantageous for the designer and the engineer, because they never have to leave their environment. You Hello and welcome to another episode of The being an engineer Podcast. Today, we're speaking with Todd Mansfield, a seasoned product development leader with over 25 years of experience, known for his strategic growth and innovation in various industries. Currently, he is the Vice President of Product at OneIPM, where he focuses on integrated project management solutions. Todd's career spans multiple leadership roles, including President and COO at House of design robotics and VP of global engineering at Echo Safety Group. He also holds degrees in applied technology, computer aided manufacturing technology and Aircraft Maintenance Technology from Boise State University and Idaho State University. Todd. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Thank you very much. Great to be here. So what made you decide to become an engineer? Oh, wow. Um, you know, I never, I never made the conscious decision to go into the engineering space. For me, grew up in a small agricultural town, so grew up tearing things apart, putting them back together, which moved into working on on automobiles and tractors and everything else. And, you know, just that led to the aviation moving into thought it would be better to work on airplanes when cars and really, you know, my first job at avid aircraft is where I got my first experience with really engineering and design, and really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed the team there, and also my first experience with CAD so starting, you know, in the early 90s with the AVID aircraft just got into the space and started working in it, and it just grew from there. What? What CAD program were you using back then? Wow, that would have been like an early version of AutoCAD. I know I was running it on a 486 computer, so I'm dating myself there, but yeah, back in the day, nice. You know, I feel like engineers who grew up on a farm, they almost have a head start on all other engineers, because I did not grow up on a farm, but from I've done several interviews with engineers who grew up on a farm, and it seems like you're always taking something apart or fixing something or building something just with what you have lying around, right? Maybe you don't have, like, a ton of resources, so you're just you have to put something together with the materials you have available. And I'm sure that cultivates a really strong engineering aptitude, I think so. I mean, you have to, you have to make do with what you have. And, you know, and you get very creative, you know, if, if you're working on something, and it's got to, you know, got to get out the door. You've got to get some, you know, some hay put up, or something done. It just has to happen. Yeah, Absolutely. Well, you are working at a company called OneIPM. Now, can you tell us a little bit about OneIPM and what it is you do there? So for just a way of introduction, OneIPM was founded by Bill Dahl, and a lot of your listeners may know Bill, especially if they're SolidWorks users. He co founded and created a program called PDM works, which was SolidWorks is PDM solution for many years. And Bill and I have known each other for 20 plus years, and have worked together over the years and been friends for that whole time. And you know, back in 19 he started working on OneIPM, and we both got busy for a while, and then here in 22 when I was able to rejoin him, it's like, this is, this is the right tool at the right time. So what OneIPM is, is o OneIPM is integrative project management. And what I mean by that is that today, people design in one application, and they manage their projects in another application, separate. And we know from studies done that app switching costs knowledge workers about four hours a week. So there is actually a cost to having multiple applications. And so what OneIPM does is solve that problem. It it is seamlessly integrated into Onshape currently, and provides a unified environment where designers and engineers can not only design, but manage their projects, complete their tasks, do the updates they need to do additional. Currently, in addition to not app switching because it's using the same data, it's one version of the truth, and it's also, excuse me, context aware. It's the same data set. So it's extremely advantageous for the designer and the engineer, because they never have to leave their environment to do all the project management tasks that they get asked to do so many times. That sounds amazing. We probably, like many small businesses and maybe even larger businesses, have too many apps, right? That kind of all get kludged together, and we struggle to make them communicate with each other, and we kind of get by. It works, but it's a pain. Like you mentioned, there's losses in productivity due to app switching. How did you and Bill approach the development of OneIPM when it comes to understanding what was most important for the users? How did you filter down to the set of functionalities that that your software has now, and know these are the right set of functionalities that are really going to be useful for the users. Yeah. Well, you know, just to give credit where credit's view, that's where Bill is such a genius, and I enjoy working with him so much, because really OneIPM is a very elegant and deceivingly powerful application that provides the users to your point all the functionality they need without getting in your way. So many times you'll you'll have an application, and it's 10 clicks to get to what you actually want to do with OneIPM, it's, you know, we're living in a smartphone world. So let me give you an analogy. We're living in a smartphone world. And when in the last 10 years have you loaded an application on your phone and then had to go to a help file to learn how to use the application? You haven't that's just the world we're living in today. So OneIPM was designed to be very discoverable and easy to use, but again, very powerful. So everything that user needs is there. It is context aware, excuse me, and it is designed in such a way that, again, it doesn't get in your way when you need to go somewhere or do an activity, it's right there at least one click away. Nice. What? Let's talk about some of the details in OneIPM. So it's integrated project management. Can you give us a few tactical examples of what that means? Sure, so with OneIPM, we actually so first and foremost, we are seamlessly integrated with Onshape. I think your your listeners, are probably familiar with Onshape, and we actually utilize Onshapes infrastructure. So for instance, we don't have two logins. We only use on shapes login to get into the application. Additionally, we're looking at the same information through API calls that the Onshape environment is using. So when you look at whether it be a task or a model, we have the ability to make associated tasks, meaning that we actually can connect to the model file. So let me give you an example in a lot of applications that are separate, you know, a task and an actual 3d model never connect. We're connected all the time, and as that model evolves, the thumbnails that we render to say a task update. So if someone were to put another hole or two in a part, you're going to see those changes. So we're that tightly integrated with Onshape. Terrific, Terrific. And I understand that there is a viewing experience that is useful for non CAD users as well in SolidWorks, because probably most people are familiar with with SolidWorks Onshape is definitely catching up, though. That would be like E drawings, right? You can send an E drawing file to anyone. They don't have to have SolidWorks, and they can open it and view your model, but they can't make changes or edit things or anything like that. And OneIPM, I guess, has some kind of analog to that. Is that accurate? Yeah, I would say somewhat. We actually do have a standalone version that runs on a web browser. Now, in full disclosure, you still have to have at least a light seed of on tape. Excuse me to do the rendering of the images, but we do extend OneIPM to the rest of the organization, so to speak, in a non CAD environment through the standalone version. The other thing is that we do provide some very immersive viewing experiences. You brought up solid work, so you probably know. About Treehouse, you know, I will we'll say bill may have had a hand in that one, but we have a tree view, or a Node view of assemblies that give non design engineers a very graphical and immersive view of, say, assembly structures. The other thing is, they can take those out as an SVD file for maybe for use as a work instruction or assembly instruction. That's really cool. So when you're using OneIPM, I mean, you're using it, so you know what it is, but it's, it sounds like it's pretty much seamless with Onshape. It's part of, it's almost part of the Onshape application, right? Yeah, it's absolutely in fact, we say it's hard to tell where, you know, Onshape ends and OneIPM begins, Yeah, I bet so. If I am maybe a project manager and I'm going in and maybe doing a design review that one of my engineers has has created there, there would be a easy way for me to point to this, this particular CAD model, and say, Oh, I noticed that, you know, maybe this, this through hole is for an m5 screw, but it's supposed to be for an m3 screw or something like that. But you can very easily directly link and point to specific models right in the project management side of Onshape. So we do real time communication inside the application. We do have messaging at the project level and the task level, and that communication fully supports imported graphics. So in the case of what you just laid out, the m5 versus the m3 screw that project manager could take an image of that, mark it up, and drop it right into a chat within OneIPM. Could even at mention the the engineers or designers they want to involve so that it it will send out of a notification to them, and that's that real time, Context Sensitive communication we're talking about. I'm guessing that Bill chose to develop this on the Onshape platform, because Onshape is really kind of the only cloud based, native cloud based CAD software out there, and so that opens up a lot of opportunities when it comes to real time collaboration and linking to different things. Does OneIPM ever plan to do something similar for SolidWorks? Yeah, great question to answer your first question, yes. Onshape, it does a very nice job of delivering their product via the cloud. And to your point, it has APIs and all the access we need to make a very robust project management solution. That being said, we have thought about the other major platforms in the marketplace, obviously, with Bill, having spent over a decade at SolidWorks himself, he knows that application very well. So we know about them. They definitely, you know our potentials for a long term roadmap, but at this point, we're currently only integrated fully with with Onshape. Got it, yeah, and on shape makes so much sense for all the reasons that we've already talked about. Oh, I was going to ask you, does OneIPM, have time tracking incorporated so, like designers can track their time on different projects At this time, we do not. So it's something, you know, we've, we were aware of. And you know, we really, we really value our customer feedback. So as we triage our roadmap for development roadmap, those type of requests do go on it, but again, we're prioritizing those as the customer requests them. Sure, of course, yeah. How have you seen I know you're not, you don't work for on shape, but I'm sure that since you develop a your product for Onshape, you're pretty aware of how the market is responding to the Onshape product. How have you seen adoption change for Onshape over the years, and how does that kind of play into your roadmap for OneIPM. Well, just to say I don't have any any specific information on on you know, market penetration of Onshape, I'm not privy to that information. That being said, just in engaging with customer base, because obviously every OneIPM customer is an Onshape customer, my, my, my takeaway has been that as the next generation of engineers and designers comes up, this is the way they like to work. You know, they the younger, the negative. I'll call it the next generation of engineers like the cloud native applications. Whether it be design or anything else, and they like the autonomy of working on any device, anywhere they're at. They like that digital nomad lifestyle, so to speak. And so I think that onscape, while I don't know for sure, is getting good traction with that next generation of engineers, because they are extremely well placed for the way people are wanting to work today and in the future. Yeah, that's an important insight. My My prediction based on very little investigation or data, my prediction is that probably for the next five to 10 years, solid works, and, you know, probably NX and, um, creo are going to continue dominating the CAD market, but somewhere in the next five to 10 years, I think we're going to see a pretty significant shift. And Onshape is so far ahead of these other major CAD platforms. I don't know, maybe they've got, I'm sure they're working on cloud based solutions as well, but Onshape has a huge head start, and I think they're, they're already targeting, you mentioned the next generation of engineers? Well, that next generation of engineers, some of those people, are still in high school, right? And I think Onshape is doing a really great job of targeting even high school students and getting them to adopt Onshape. So once they get into college, they still want to use Onshape, and then they graduate, and you know, Onshape is just what they know. So anyway, my prediction is five to 10. Somewhere in that next five to 10 years, we'll see a big shift in the number of traditional, say, traditional CAD platform users, SolidWorks and X creo, and I think onshape is going to see a big, a big tick up in the market. We'll see, yeah, no, I think you're right. I you know, I know that they're we, they, as well as OneIPM, are big supporters of, say, FIRST Robotics Competition, yeah. And there's heavy use there of those applications and all the educational work they do, absolutely, I think you're spot on. I think I think that's exactly what's going to happen. They just made it so accessible. You know, we have a volunteer program called CAD Club, where we have middle school and high school aged kids come in and we teach them how to use CAD and some engineering skills and hopefully some life skills. And initially I was like, wow, how do we do this? You know, SolidWorks is super expensive. I guess we could try to get educational licenses, but, like, that's, uh, there's challenges doing that as well. And even with educational licenses, you need a pretty robust computer to run it, and then stumbled across on shape and is it was just a no brainer. You know, you install it, you don't have to install it at all, right? That's one of the big benefits of it. It's always up to date, because it's you just log into your account to the cloud and you can run it on like any old dinky public school issued laptop. I mean, the kids that come into our cat club, they don't have high end performance workstation laptops. They have these, you know, crummy little $200 Chromebooks or whatever they are, and they work great on on shape. I was amazing to go there my my daughter and her friends, who are in the early years of high school now, are running Onshape, on Chromebooks, and they're not new Chromebooks. It's awesome because it gives them access to such a powerful tool, yeah, that that is going to prepare them for their future, which I can't even imagine what it's going to look like 10 years from now. Yeah, yeah, yep. All right. Well, I love it. I think Onshape is really cool. Excited about what you're doing with this tightly knit integration project management. Let's, let's, let's go a little bit further back in your history and talk about company called House of design, robotics, where, where you worked. You were the was it the VP of engineering there? Operations, operations, thank you. Tell us a little bit about House of design robotics and like, kind of what you did there. This is really interesting for me, because this is kind of what we do here at pipeline as well. No house of design robotics was for a number of years, a system integrator building building automated solutions for various industries. And then a few years ago, got a couple contracts to focus on the construction industry, specifically the off site construction space. And so the the business focused on that offsite construction space, and in doing so, has developed several products to address the automation of the off site construction market, primarily in in roof and floor trust as well as walls floor. And ceilings, and so they are a leading supplier to the off site construction industry of those systems. Now, when you say off site construction industry is that kind of putting together, like subsystems, for lack of a better term, of the home itself, and then those subsystems, whether it's a roof or some walls or something get shipped off to the construction site, and then final assembly happens at the construction site. That's exactly right. So in the case of trusses, they will build the truss at a factory, then truck it to the job site, where they would be craned into place. As far as modular, whether it's the just a flat pack of the walls or actually a box, you may see, like most people might call the mobile home or modular, going down the road to a construction site where they actually will stack modules in place. And so that's becoming a much more frequent occurrence, and gaining in popularity with the housing shortage we have, especially in affordable housing. You know, people in industry are looking to new ways of creating a higher number of of homes for people who need them. Yeah, very cool is, is the the product that they created a system for automating the assembly of these, these the trusses or the roofs or whatever is being built. That's correct. So the the automation basically takes the place of a worker, say, building a truss or building a wall. And the idea is that take the heavy labor off the individual, the lifting, you know, the sprains, the strains, all the things that come with construction. Let the automation of robotic arm do that for you, and it not only speeds the process, but increases safety and reduces the need for labor. And as you may know, in the construction space, there is a an acute labor shortage at this time. I'm interested, from a business owner perspective, what do you think were were some of, if you can speak to this, what do you think were some of the, the most impactful things that house of design robotics did to drive their their revenue growth. Was it? Was it just building their own products that were easier to scale? Or were there things before that or after that that have occurred? Well, I would say that, you know, it's, it's really building a solution to a major need in the market. And, you know, you can call it a product, you can call it a system. But really, the the key is that they came up with a solution to an acute problem in an industry that needed solved, and they solved it. You know, it, it is. It has changed. In my opinion, it has changed how construction is and will be done, because they proved that construction, especially off site, construction, can be automated at scale. Yeah, that's great. I like your your mindset, there's thinking about it as a solution for the market, as opposed to just a product. Reminds me of a podcast episode I heard with Tim Ferriss. He was interviewing Seth Godin, who's a marketing genius, has been, you know, around for a long, long time. And Seth Godin, I forgot exactly what the question was but, but Seth's answer was, Are you selling something that your customers want to buy? And I thought, wow, what are like? Just such a clear, concise way of stating that business principle, right? Does, does your service or product align with market needs? That's, I don't know, maybe a more pedantic way to put it, that maybe it's not, doesn't have the visceral impact, and the way he put it was just so great, so clear and concise. Are you selling something that your customers want to buy? Anyway? That's a great question. Yeah, that is a great question. Okay, well, let me take a very short break here and share with everyone that 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 Todd Mansfield. So Todd, you, you also worked at a company. Called, I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly. Echo Safety Group, is that how you say it? You got it right? Great. Echo Safety Group, yeah, Echo, and we're involved in reducing turnover and kind of like fostering or enhancing team collaboration. What were some strategies that you implemented to achieve those goals? Well, I think first and foremost it, it starts with communication. Basically, you have to be very intentional to to be communicating with the team all the time. And in that case, we had several teams on multiple continents. And for myself, Bill, I've my main role was to make sure that we were, we had organizational alignment, that that everybody was on the same page, and that we were heading in the same direction. So I did spend a lot of time working with the teams both web conferencing as well as face to face because even though these web tools have gotten very good, it's it's hard to replace that face to face contact. I agree. I agree. This might be a similar answer here, but if I've done my research correctly, you launched over 25 products each year, or at least most years, and that's a lot, I know. I mean, we've developed products here, and I know how significant an effort it is just to launch one product, let alone 25 Can you talk a little bit about the process that you use to manage such a high volume of product launches? So at Echo, they had a very good product planning process, and it was, it was, should I say it was institutionalized, meaning everybody knew it. Everybody knew how we worked and what what the steps were. And it's not to say that we weren't. We weren't always continuously improving. We definitely were, but we focused on the product, not the process, still, that's been famously covered by somebody else, but you know, really where we focused our efforts was on how we accelerated the process. We had. The process was, again, very good. Everybody knew what their job was, and so we spent our time trying to accelerate the process by by implementing and supporting with, say, automation the development. So, for instance, in the early days, we were paper based, and so we had the we had the blessing of having some great programming talent on staff. So we were able to move with PDM works, and it's in its carry on product later years, from paper to paperless. We also were able to do some very trick programming with with our PDM vaults to track and maintain, you know, a lot of metrics on what was going on, so that we could identify issues and or scope creep, and jump right on the problems and solve them very quickly versus letting them fester. So, you know, when we when we are moving at that pace? And the projects ranged from, you know, modifications all the way to completely new products. So there was a range of of scale of those projects, it just lent itself to getting work done. And, you know, and at the end of the day, we had an amazing team at the end of the day, that's who gets the work done. So very blessed to be, be working with such a good team, yeah, but I love how you give credit back to the team at the end of the day. That's, I mean, we can't really do a whole lot without a great team behind us. Absolutely. Yeah. Speaking of of the team back, let's go back when you were at at House of design robotics. Can you think of a significant breakthrough in the company's solutions that that the team helped develop, and kind of tell us the story, like behind what that breakthrough was and how it came to be. Okay? Well, without getting too specific, one that comes to mind would be working on A, the second generation of a of a system that, as we moved into the development process, had a very good review process, very good product development process at that organization. And as the engineers presented their ideas for what the second generation would look like, all good concepts. Ultimately, one engineer put forward a concept where it was more off the shelf equipment than bespoke custom design. And I see you nodding your head. And what was so elegant about that is it did a couple things. Number one, the design, and let's say, you know, for instance, one of the components. Of an off the shelf track for a seventh axis, along with some other equipment that allowed it to be retrofitted to multiple makes of equipment that it had to be paired with. So first of all, you went from a one to one to a one to many. So that was a big win. Secondly, it eliminated a lot of technical debt that a bespoke solution for each manufacturer's piece of equipment would have taken so what the breakthrough was, you could say was, hey, we went from one to one to one to many. But it also addressed, you know, scope, time and cost, you know, the triple constraint. It was elegant because it was a solution, not only from an engineering aspect, but also from a business standpoint, which you know was, was very, very good to see. Because, as you can appreciate, I'm sure, having built many machines yourself, anytime you can streamline development, it's, it's, it's something you want to do. Oh, yeah, it's, it's so huge. We almost everything we do is completely custom. You mentioned bespoke. I mean, that's, that's our business, and it's, you know, to be honest, it's a tough business model to to make money building one of something right? Because you're, you're inevitably inventing at least part of the process. So that's something that we're working on right now, is is trying to come up with some standardization and even our own products or productized services. I think that's just, it's kind of the natural evolution of any any company like ours, machine builders. You kind of have to move into some kind of product based category where you're not inventing the wheel on every project, right? Exactly. Let's talk about agile working a little bit. You have quite a bit of experience working in Agile systems, and agile, I know is used extensively in software teams. Have you used it in hardware teams as well? I have Yes. And how does it change, or is it kind of used the same way in both software and hardware? Well, in my experience, and I can't say I was doing it all right, but you know, first of all, the truth of the matter is, any electromechanical system or device you design and build is going to have a cross functional team. So rarely do you get the benefit of a pure software or pure hardware team. So, you know, I really started using Agile back when I was with echo a number of years ago. And we used it across the whole team that would be mechanical, electrical test, firmware, software, the whole team. And, you know, I found it to be very beneficial, excuse me, very beneficial. Because it actually drove communication in that the you know, the the ceremonies of agile that you do is like, say, a daily stand up. Really give people who may not have the opportunity to communicate and to bring up issues, a daily opportunity to do so. And it was always amazing, especially once the team formed and and really started communicating, hey, our assumptions we had yesterday are not the assumptions we have today. After our test last night, we need to recalibrate and and figure out what we're going to do. You know, those type of conversations. So number one, it's really helpful in that it, it actually drives communication. Secondly, it, it gives permission. It allows people to to talk about needed changes. You know, I you know, everybody talks about predictive versus agile. You know, people are not in Agile waiting around for a designer view to bring up bad news. It's, it's hopefully real time. And you know, the only, you know, the only thing worse than bad news is bad news late. And so from from the standpoint of development, that's another huge thing, and then that leads to better solutions, whether it's internal to the design or maybe external from the customer. You know, salesman comes back with feedback from the market saying, I we were going to go with the five button controller, but the market is saying they need a nine button controller. You know, we need to reset, get a nine button controller, or we're not going to compete those type of conversations. So I found it extremely useful in a cross functional team hardware through software and and that all of the disciplines benefit from it. You mentioned driving communication. Can you are there a couple other key elements of agile that you can talk about? I mean, give us like a. A two minute Crash Course. What is agile? So Agile is, it's, it's a framework. So Agile is a framework, right? And so, and there are, there are flavors of Agile. You've heard of Scrum, you've heard of Kanban. You know, there's extreme for this conversation. I'll just focus on Scrum, because that's probably one of the most popular but really it's a framework of iterative development that basically allows for the the planning and excusing of a project. Now, one thing I want to say is that even if you're quote, unquote agile, it doesn't mean you don't plan anymore and you just play it off the cuff. You are doing planning, and you're working through your project plan, but the work is being done in an agile manner, which is very iterative, with constant feedback, and in that feedback, there is opportunity for change. So as a development team develops a product. They they are not stuck, so to speak, with a single plan that they have to carry out from beginning to end, they can iterate in the design process to hopefully bring to market the most you know, elegant solution to the problem they're trying to solve at, you know at the at the best price that the market will bear. So agile, to me, really is a is a framework of getting work done in simplest one. I love it. That's great. Great explanation. All right. Well, let's see here. Can you think of what has been one of the most innovative products that that you worked on developing, and how did it affect the market? Wow, okay, obviously, the the systems from House of design, you know those, those are industry changing. And I was just to be clear, I was blessed to be part of an amazing team of people who were way smarter than I. Were doing some incredible work there. But, you know, the outcome of of their work is that they forever changed an industry and excited to see where it goes from here. Yeah, as far as as as present, I'm I'm excited about the work Bill and I are doing at OneIPM. I think that in time, the work we're doing at OneIPM is going to have a big impact on how people develop products. I think that the the dispersed I design over here and I manage projects over there, model is going to go away. And in the future, you don't have to be part of a large organization with a major ERP or PLM system to do that, the mainstream designer and engineer are going to have the same tools as large, large, large organizations to do their job. And I think OneIPM is doing a big part to make that happen. That's terrific. That leads me to my next question. I always ask people, What is something that you have done or observed that has accelerated the speed of engineering. And it sounds like OneIPM is and will continue to do that. So if you want to focus your answer on OneIPM, that's fine. Or if you can think of something else that has legitimately moved the needle in terms of speeding up the engineering process, I would love to hear you talk about that. It's hard not to stay with OneIPM. You know, if Sam deal in answering this question, really, collaborating with Bill tall on OneIPM is is number one opportunity of a lifetime, work with a guy I respect and like very much, who's done some amazing things in this space. Secondly, it's allowing us to pay it forward. You know, between the two of us, we have 60 years of experience, a lot of lessons learned, a lot of best practices and innovation, but also a lot of scar tissue that you know, we're pouring into this product that we we know is going to make things better for a lot of hard working engineers and designers and project managers and everybody involved in the product development process. Because, you know, people who develop products are very passionate and they put in a lot of hours. You know, we've all eaten a lot of cold pizza after hours trying to get machines built, trying to get projects done, and applications like one IPM, my hope is that they can accelerate development, ease the workload of engineers and designers and project manager. Managers so that they can get their work done efficiently and quickly, so that they can do what they love, but they can also go home and have dinner with their family and come back the next day energized and ready to innovate and change the world. Yeah, well, I think we can all say amen to that. If, if you were to try and distill OneIPM and and what it does in terms of increasing productivity, you know, accelerating the speed of engineering, like I know there, there are many aspects to OneIPM. It's not just like one thing, right, different features and different ways of using it, but is there a way that you can kind of distill it down to its like, really basic core concept. What is it that that OneIPM does at the end of the day that that makes project management easier, more effective? As it's it's integrated with Onshape? Sure, yeah, to me, OneIPM gives the user the right information at the right time to make the right decisions. It it is, it is a real time. Look at the work you and your team are doing, and hopefully it's providing that information so that you can make better decisions. Because so many times decisions are made by trailing indicators after the fact and playing catch up is really hard OneIPM is real time context sensitive, and it allows its users to make the best decisions possible when they need to be made great, great a tool for delivering the critical relevant information in real time at the right time. That's right, all right. Well, we haven't really talked about engineering leadership specifically, too much, but you've been, as you mentioned, in the field for over 30 years, and you have, you know, the scar tissue to prove it. What advice would you give to younger engineers who are interested in going into a leadership track sure you know, the first thing I would say is is make sure that management leadership is what you really want to do. So many times I've seen young engineers want to move into leadership for financial reasons, for instance. And you know what I want to make sure everyone takes away from this conversation is that if you're a young engineer and you're just trying to move up, I would have a conversation with your organization, because, as an organization, when you promote your best engineer, as you well know, you lose your best engineer because now they're in meetings, they're checking time cards, they're doing one on ones. And in my experience, any organization worth its salt that has a great engineer is more than happy to make a solid career path for a subject matter expert, versus lose them to something they may not really want to do. So first and foremost, I'd make sure that that's a track you want to take have a conversation, because being a subject manager expert may be a better path if, if that's what you're looking at. Secondly, if leadership is what you want to do, I would say start with maybe some informational interviews of leaders in your organization and in other organizations to find out what does the job entail. Is it what you think it's going to be, and is it the commitment you're willing to make? Because there are a lot of while everybody focuses on the positives of leaderships, there are some negatives, and so make sure you have a balanced view of that. And then finally, I would say, start leading right where you're at. So many people have the mindset that, well, I'll get promoted to be a manager, and then I'll learn how to be a manager. My position is, start leading right where you're at, do what you can where you're at, to lead, whether it's leading a project or leading a team or taking the advantage, taking the opportunity to demonstrate and execute leadership characteristics, and trust me, if you're doing that, the organization is going to recognize it, and you're going to be on a short list for the next opportunity. So start right where you're at, even if the role isn't open and you've got to wait a while for that opportunity, it's time. Well spent. Great advice. Great advice. Well, Todd, thank you so much for spending some time with me and sharing your experience and insights with the whole community here at the being an engineer podcast. Anything else that you'd like to share before we sign off? No, this has been great today. I appreciate you having me on and it's been great to get to know you and. Your organization, your your team there at Pipeline, doing some great work. I've checked out your website. You make some very nice machines, by the way. So thank you. Good job on that, and I wish you the best of luck. I appreciate it so much. How can people get in touch with you? Absolutely? Probably the best way to get a hold of me is Todd, T, O, D, D, @OneIPM.com, and or I'm on LinkedIn, of course, so you can find me there under OneIPM and happy to connect with anybody who would like to talk about what we're doing. Perfect. All right. Well, thank you so much, Todd. All right. Appreciate it. Have a great day, and I hope you stay cool down there in Phoenix.
Unknown: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 Teampipeline.us. To join a vibrant community of engineers online. Visit Thewave.engineer. Thank you for listening.
