Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1315894
16 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2020 who conceived the ideas that made the com- pany wouldn't lead the company. They would make somebody else come in and lead, and that would be the Harvard MBA or somebody like that who did not understand what was going on. HP is a good example, and so is Intel. The engineers who started did not give up the leadership role. They surrounded themselves with the skills they did not have. That's what a good tech company looks like. The ones that are failing are the ones where the engineers didn't lead. The manufacturing people who were louder than all the rest wound up in front of the company, and they bankrupted it. Engi- neers must lead and quantify what things cost because nobody else has this information. I sometimes say this in my class: "No one in their right mind would ever think of putting an engineer in charge of a bank." Why do you put a finance person in charge of an engineering company? I can cite a dozen companies that have failed because of that. Matties: You've mentioned several points about the economics of a respin. But what are some other benefits from eliminating respins beyond the money side of it? Ritchey: If you eliminate the respin, then your next product can be on the market sooner because those people can start on the next products sooner, which is what we did at disk drives. Back when I was part of it, the pro- duction life of a disk drive was nine months, so we had to have the next one ready in nine months. If your team was tied up for three or four months on a respin, you had a three- month gap and no new product. Matties: Is there something, though, that the engineers and designers can do to get it right the first time? And even though companies are budgeting for respins, what can the engineer do to avoid it, or is he just bound by broken systems? Ritchey: Engineers must have enough skill, first of all. For example, in a disk drive, you have servos, and you must have somebody who understands how to design a stable servo loop and that kind of thing, and that's one of the things they weren't doing. It requires enough skill to avoid trial and error. In almost all cases, the skill set is what's missing. Matties: You mentioned simulation. Is that simulation tool offsetting the lack of skill sets? Ritchey: I'm going to do a little story because it illustrates this really well. Amdahl was the first company who ever competed successfully against IBM, and I was employee number 40. We got this thing all rolled out and had a press conference. It was a big deal because it was the first computer that was all VLSI integrated circuits and the first to compete with IBM and have more power than what they had. The press conference had a fuss about that. During the Q&A session afterward, a reporter said, "Mr. Amdahl, aren't you afraid you're making a computer so fast that it will replace thinking?" His response was, "What you don't understand is that what we have here is an exceedingly fast idiot," which is what simula- tion tools are. You must have the skill to run the tool. It does not replace skill. The tools never replace skill; they just let you work faster. Whoever assembles the design team has to hire people who have the skills. There's another thing I tell my students: "If you're going to be in this business, there's good news and bad news. The good news is you don't have to do the same thing every day like the postman who finally gets so bored that he kills somebody. The bad news is that things change so fast, so you have to learn to do something new every day." It's impossible not to keep learning if you're in this business. I also tell Engineers must lead and quantify what things cost because nobody else has this information.