Being an Engineer

S1E09 Engineering Starts With Why | Alex Kim

May 26, 2020 Alex Kim Season 1 Episode 9
Being an Engineer
S1E09 Engineering Starts With Why | Alex Kim
Show Notes Transcript

From engineering roles at iRobot to Sensata to Thermo Fisher Alex shares with us the top skills that product designers need, the importance of understanding your “why”, and his mission to eliminate quality departments (okay, that’s not really what he meant on the last one). 

Pipeline Design & Engineering partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, or automation equipment but don’t have the bandwidth or resources internally to develop that equipment. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com 

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

Aaron Moncur:

Welcome to the being an engineer podcast. Our guest today is Alex Kim. And we're gonna have a delightful conversation been super excited to speak with Alex for the past several weeks. So Alex, welcome to the show.

Alex Kim:

Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, you bet. I'm excited as well. All right, Alex, do you have been working professionally as an engineer for about four years now? Is that right? That's right. Okay, you graduated from Tufts University in Massachusetts with a degree in mechanical engineering. Something that I saw on your LinkedIn profile that I really loved was the first sentence of your written description says, I promise you, I am not your average engineer. And I love that, you know, it's such a statement of confidence and intrigue. So I was hoping that we could start by telling me more about that. What's behind that statement?

Alex Kim:

Yeah, I'm glad you caught on air. And, you know, funny enough, I was watching the everyone's watching the documentary, The Last Dance right now, the Michael Jordan documentary on Sundays, on ESPN, right. And there's a part where the legendary coach Phil Jackson, talking to player Dennis Rodman, one of the greatest players of all time, and Phil Jackson, one of the greatest coaches of all time, and he says to dentists, you know, you're not a guy that is a regular guy. And Dennis is like, No, I'm not. The Native Americans would call us one that walks backwards, right? So person that walks backwards looks at life with a little bit different perspective. Could be good, could be bad, but either way, you know, take it with that, that different perspective. And for me, I see it and feel like that's a real strength for me. So I tried to say, I'm not your average engineer, and I have that confidence. And I know I can execute on that as well.

Aaron Moncur:

Fantastic. Well, I want to dive into that a little bit more, maybe a little later. What are some of the things that you have done that you intend to do? How do you prepare yourself that that feed into that sense, but we'll get to that. So maybe backing up a little bit? How did you decide that engineering was the profession for you?

Alex Kim:

Great question. All joking aside, my, you know, originally, my dad really wanted me to be a doctor. So my dad's actually, he's a retired police officer now. And so coming out the gate, he's actually a first generation immigrant as well. So he's really into you know, okay, when you grow up, you're there gonna be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. And so, I tried to Doctor bed for a little bit. I like to argue also, at least my dad thinks so. So you know, he thought I was gonna be, you know, the doctor, once I knock those two out, became an engineer. Now, but again, seriously,

Aaron Moncur:

is this an elimination?

Alex Kim:

Cousin, some could say, but honestly, I think I really came into engineering because I love the idea of creating I think for at a young age, I was really into Legos and building. But as I got older, and I've seen more the jobs out there, I really love the idea of being able to create things and create things that impact the world in a positive way. So I chose to go into engineering to work in the type of engineering that I'm in, in the medical field and medical device now, for that reason,

Aaron Moncur:

I love it. I feel the same way. I love creating, you know, I think it's, I think it's ingrained in us as humans to want to create, you know, to want to build and develop something new, and especially that that the force is strong and us engineers with that creative gene.

Alex Kim:

So absolutely.

Aaron Moncur:

Something else that you mentioned in your LinkedIn profile is your WHY Now Simon Sinek talks about why right, he has this great book Start with Why. And it sounds like the reason you decided to become an engineer was this passion you had for creating, wanting to impact the world in a positive way. Four years in, has your wife changed much at all? Or is it is it the same or I don't know what what insights have you had over the past four years actually working as an engineer that may have refined your why?

Alex Kim:

Yeah, absolutely. I think starting out, I really worked. You know, mechanical engineering is so broad. So I really was in college and just coming out of college just exploring, really what I wanted to do within engineering. out the gate. I was working on consumerism products, consumer robotics for a company called iRobot, making the Roomba and all of their family of products. And I really wanted to get into at the time where they want to get into autonomous vehicles into the automotive industry. So started working at a company called Sada, that fantastic company as well more in the auto field. And, and that, really, we're focused on sensors at that time. And that really, I think, from working there, it wasn't consulted, but I think it really had a yearning to get back to working on products that directly impact people's lives. I think I touched on my dad earlier and how he's law law enforcement officers. So I think that are retired law enforcement officer. So I think that for me, on being able to positively impact people's lives was important to me, high ethics, high morality, and important projects that help shape people's lives. Where was very important to me. So I made the switch over to Thermo Fisher. And I think working there has been fantastic and all the way up to these projects that started popping up about late February to early March related to COVID-19. You know, more of the same, and that it's been absolutely rewarding to be able to feel like I'm directly creating products that are being shipped out the door and helping people identify and fight this disease.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, how fulfilling? What were there some products? Or were there any products as you're growing up? Or maybe even, you know, in high school or college, anything in particular, that that you saw this product? And you're like, wow, I want to do something like that anything that kind of really inspired you and furthered your desire to be an engineer?

Alex Kim:

Yeah, I think that again, Legos were really my, I think my introduction, I know, they're, you know, very rudimentary, like, basic thing. But I feel like little Legos were really big for me just elevating through that starting with just basic Lego kit making, like whatever the X Wing, I think, was my first box I ever had, right, the X Wing from Star Wars, that was awesome. So just making something basic, like that little bit of contraction to it, and then evolving through that eventually to making robots with, with the, the kits and with the controllers on them as well, I think that's really being able to understand the building blocks of what can make something and then being able to infuse your creativity and the layers of technology, you can throw on top of that, by having a controller by having motors and having other electronic components for sensing as well. Really opened up my mind to okay, you know, basic parts are really the foundation for making great, really cool things.

Aaron Moncur:

What are some of those basic parts you mentioned? Like the the building blocks the basics, what do you consider is the basic building blocks for mechanical engineering?

Alex Kim:

Yeah, I mean, something I studied, I wish I studied way more of in college was more of the materials, right. So just basic materials. And again, building blocks in that just injection molded little plastic pieces that happen to have a little bit of elevation, circular elevation, so you can slide blocks into each other, like that is a great building block. But being able to use ones with different materials and different shapes, form, fit and function to create new stuff, I think that's really critical, in addition, for mechanical engineering, the system in that having that controller than having the actuator as well. And being able to control that actuator with the controller, I think it really takes you against that next level. So I think those are to me, three of the big building blocks. And then to complete the feedback loop there is really the sensing side as well. So being able to sense actuate and then control all of that is really and a lot of engineering to me. Yeah.

Aaron Moncur:

Have you have you used many 3d printed materials and some of the designs that you've built or have you saved historically most in like plastic injection molding or metal machine parts?

Alex Kim:

Yeah, I've gotten to 3d printing, injection molding and, and metal casted parts are those are pretty much all three have been within my domain. I think I'm blessed because I robots really, they're really about the 3d printed parts, because so much of those robots is made are made of plastic, relatively complex plastic features as well, that are kind of a pain on injection molding, especially for like a soft injection mold. So we did a lot of 3d printing parts. And so I got to do a lot of 3d printing when I was still working there. In fact, the 3d print lab technician there was gone for like a week and a half. So they had me run it. And so that was great. For me. Yeah, great experience for me, you know, just learning about just the start the different types of printing FDM, SLA, SLS, and how to best use those for what your application is, and understanding geometries and how you should be laying out it, you know, kind of just like injection molding, like, there are people that design parts, but there are people that design the actual molds themselves. And kind of the same goes for plastic and plastic 3d printing and that you are you have someone that's designing apart, but you need someone who understands how to lay this out to print this the most quickly, and also have the strongest features and make sure that nothing is breaking in the middle as well. So being able to have that insight. Been really awesome for me having that great, right,

Aaron Moncur:

right. 3d printing is changing so quickly, it seems like you know, every week a new material is coming out or new companies popping up. Are there any 3d printing brands that you have found to be especially good?

Alex Kim:

Yeah. My put a shameless plug in for my buddy from college. He's working at Flashforge Flashforge. But we mark Ford. Yes, I'm sorry, Mark Forge. And so love Mark Ford. Yeah, fantastic machines, and he interned there before we graduate college as well. So he's able to bring some to the classroom as well and show them off. So very cool machines as well, you know, go to school in Boston area, you have the, oh, what are the ones that the orange, the orange SLA once Formlabs form opts out form labs, as well, a couple of people end up working there, as well. But the big, the big Stratasys printers to I'm used to those as well, and the big objects as well. I love those machines. Each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses. Right, even, you know, for labs, you know, sometimes got to tinker with the mirror a little bit as compared to the Stratasys one, but just the general overall pm and maintenance I'm dealing with sometimes, but they're all great machines for their own reasons.

Aaron Moncur:

Well, I will echo what you said about the form labs and the Markforged machines. We have multiple of each of those brands here at Pipeline and we use them all the time form labs in particular you mentioned that sometimes you have to mess with the mirror and clean things off. And their their newest one the form three I'm not getting paid to say anything, but it's really a great the form to even was a great machine but the fright three is another level up you know, we've done zero maintenance with it so far. And we've printed on or know a lot of parts hundreds of parts, probably

Alex Kim:

that's awesome. Oh, yeah,

Aaron Moncur:

I mean, for I think it's like 3500 bucks, you can't beat that the, the the surface finish, just and all the different materials that they have. Yeah. And then Mark forged we use those all the time for our test fixtures and some of our equipment, we even use them for production things that we're delivering the just so strong, the carbon fiber is fantastic.

Alex Kim:

Yes, I think for my capstone project, actually, my buddy Jason, he ended up printing a carbon fiber was it was a crown year. huge crowd here, we ended up needing for this project. And he was like, You know what, let me just print this out. And it ended up you know, we needed a custom shape as well, something you couldn't necessarily would have been pretty, pretty expensive to machine out. And we didn't need that much. wasn't that big of a low though supposed to be on it was just this custom shape in particular. And so him being able to print that out was awesome, and really made a difference for our team. And that really opened my eyes to how great these Mark forge machines really are. Yeah,

Aaron Moncur:

we do a lot of fixtures where we're holding a device and you know some orientation, and previously we just have it machined out of a block of aluminum and we'd have a nice 3d contoured surface cradle machined into its of the device fit nice and snug. And they were great, but you know, it's 2500 bucks and three weeks every time we wanted to do one Yep. And now with the mark Forge, it's you know, 400 bucks or something like that and a day or two to print it out. And we have something that's almost as strong as aluminum for way less price, right? Lighter, just just a great machine. I need to sign up with Mark Forge and become like a reseller something I'm always telling people how great their machines. You hear that Mark forged my way.

Alex Kim:

And let me ask you a question because I think in the past year at Thermo Fisher, it's been had some fantastic time on some big heavy machinery, production machinery. But I think I've gotten, I feel like I've gotten away from design. And so I haven't gotten to do as much 3d printing as of late. So I want to ask you, what have you seen in the advancement of 3d printing in the past year or two? And where do you see this going? Because I remember watching the documentary thing a couple years ago now about it was on Netflix all about 3d printing, right? And the next revolution? And I'm curious what your thoughts are on the matter? And when was that revolution coming? And what what's that going to be? What's that gonna look like?

Aaron Moncur:

I think the revolution is already here, it's just going to incrementally grow more and more as time goes by, as far as materials. So we use the Formlabs machines all the time in house, we've we've certainly worked with, you know, like Stratasys, and some of the bigger 3d printing companies. And they're great, you know, they have they have great parts. But honestly, I feel like the Formlabs, you get 90% 95% of what you get from the big guys for so much less cost. And they keep cranking out new materials all the time. In fact, they just came out with a new they call it their tough 2000 I think material, and it's supposed to simulate abs, and we got some samples, and it's a great material. They're they're tough material. I'm getting maybe too much into detail. I won't go too long, too far into this rabbit hole. But they're all tough material, it was tough for sure, you could whip that thing against the concrete and it would not break. But it was it was kind of soft, also would take a set. And this new one, it retains that same toughness, but it's not soft, like the other one was I took it outside and I threw it against the concrete several times and it held up. So yeah, Formlabs, they have so many great materials. And then there's carbon 3d, which is not really a new company anymore. They've been around for three or four years now. But the speed at which they print is is probably not quite there for all mass manufacturing requirements. But it's certainly approaching the speed at which traditional mass production processes can pump parts out. A lot of the auto manufacturers are using them. I think shoe manufacturers, one of the one of our team members used to work at a company that they had a couple of these, these carbon 3d machines. And they're I mean, they're really impressive. I remember the TED Talk that their CEO gave he printed apart during the talk, it was like seven minutes or something. So I think the revolution is already here. And it's we're just we're just gonna see faster prints better materials, you know, every year, every year, it's gonna get better.

Alex Kim:

For sure, for sure. Yeah. And I couldn't agree more. Because I see it. I have a couple friends. Thermo Fisher is right next to the Tesla factory. And so Oh, and so I have a few friends that work there. And they have a couple carbon 3d printers there. And so I know that those things are pretty badass. In short,

Aaron Moncur:

yeah. Very cool. So you mentioned iRobot. For those that don't know, iRobot is the company that manufactures the Roomba, which I think was kind of the first at least big robotic vacuum cleaner. That sounds like a really cool place to work. How did you how did you start there?

Alex Kim:

Yeah, it was a fantastic place to work. I actually, I had known someone that had worked there previously. And so I reached out to them, and then actually had a professor whose husband work there. And so I talked to him and got a job offer an okay job offer. They're amazing place to work. Just a really, you know, they talk about environment in tech, right. And like working at like a Google or working at like a Facebook or something like that. I don't think you could be working at iRobot. Just in terms of the environment and the creativity for engineers and the environment. They set up for engineers, the CEO calling angles MIT grad, and also an engineer. And so you could just feel like the company was just mainly engineers, not mainly business people, not mainly sales people, just engineers just really good at their craft on each try to get better every single day and work on their piece of the pie. So the different teams are broken up by you got teams working on one product and each person owns a sub component of that machine. And it was really cool to see everyone has their masters like if I'm working on the wheels, I am the wheel master and iterating through the wheel designs until I get the best design possible. And then if I'm working on the value of the actual vacuum aspect, that guy is the vacuum master. He's got all the vacuum test pictures, and really was good at that. craft as well. So if there's any kind of cross pollination, or if there was a new product coming out, people would totally be willing to collaborate. And hey, I need help on vacuuming. I need help on wheels, like, what have you done in your research? What can help me for this new product?

Aaron Moncur:

That's very cool. So, so many companies, I feel like our product companies, but they're kind of marketing companies to do engineering also. And it sounds like iRobot is legitimately an engineering company that also does marketing.

Alex Kim:

Absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely. And so they do everything from like, every other week, there'd be a seminar from a different speaker people talking about. I remember one was about like, Blackhat hacking, just to just teach people different skills, or people that do international business, and how to be safe when you're bringing IP from country to country, other skills like that in between, but really interesting topics, they really just want you to continue learning and continue that your own self development cycle as your engineering

Aaron Moncur:

sounds like a blast. So you were at iRobot, and then you went to sin sada right, then you went to Thermo Fisher. Now iRobot itself is certainly not a small company. I think it's 1500 people something like that rice and SATA 6000 or so. And Thermo Fisher is just a gigantic company with like, 50,000 employees or something. What What, what's it been like to work at some of these kind of big companies? Yeah. What are some of the pros and cons?

Alex Kim:

Sure, sure. Sure. Sure. So yeah, robot, like you just said is more of that midsize company. Whereas cinsaut, and ThermoFisher are these big, big multinational companies, right? 1000s of employees, bunch of different sites. It's, it's been great in that you have so many resources at these big companies, you have so many of these established things that you don't have to reinvent the wheel a lot of time, and people can be willing to help if you're just reaching out about one thing or another. Or if we use a product, for example, like Thermo Fisher, we're using a lot of analyzers that are thermal happy to be Thermo Fisher brand, or we recently got a capper de capper for one of our sample preparation robots. And this was also Thermo Fisher red. So that's definitely kind of a nice thing. It's kind of a it's it's self feeding. And we're using Fisher brand pipettes. And we're using Nalgene, which is also part of the portfolio, bottles and that sort of thing. So kind of cool. It's all you know, it's all internal, you always have a contact, if you need any kind of help with something and they can get to you fast. And we take care of each other within the company. That's pretty cool. Yeah, that's been cool. I do. I do really like iRobot. And that that smaller company about that I really knew everyone. I think within Thermo Fisher, I know everyone within my site, and a few of the other sites I work closely with, but our site's about 500 people, which is about the size of iRobot when I was still working there, and so I know everyone on site, but you asked me to name more than the 500 employees at my site, I will struggle, or Sure.

Aaron Moncur:

Hey, I'm impressed with 500. That's amazing. Sometimes I don't remember my kids names.

Alex Kim:

Hey, you know, some of it's not remembering names, but I'll remember the face or at least after a couple tries to be like, you remember me? I remember you we know each other. I'm just bad. Yeah.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, I usually get my kids faces 10 times. So let's talk about product designers. hardgoods product designers like like we are you have some skills, market analysis, programming, prototyping? I'm guessing there's some cad in there. What What, like the top, I don't know, 234 skills that you think any good product designer should have?

Alex Kim:

Yeah, that's a great question. Oh, and top three or four skills. I think for for me, it's always at the top of my list no matter what. But this goes for everything is number ones communication skills. So always be able to be a team player, or team leaders if you need to be I think that's very important to me. And when I'm when I'm either communicating with others, or whether someone's dealing with me, or someone is I'm their customer. I think that communication is really key. But in terms of the hard skills, CAD is probably one of my number one skills that you know, why those requisite skills for being a mechanical engineer?

Aaron Moncur:

What CAD program are you on?

Alex Kim:

I've used SolidWorks for pretty much my entire career. Okay, I saved here. Yeah, I actually at iRobot it was actually Creo which I got somewhat I get that. But I still would, you know, kind of like, learning Spanish when you know, French. It's kind of like, oh, it's kind of like this thing in French. Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Moncur:

I just need to figure out where it is.

Alex Kim:

Right. Right. Right. So you're just basically always trying to get it back to the way SolidWorks does it? Right.

Aaron Moncur:

Right.

Alex Kim:

Let's see. So, CAD and being able to understand drawings, if I can lump that into one, being able to translate drawings, I think it's so important. Working with so often companies, you're not working internally, you're working with other suppliers, right. And so being able to create a great model, translate that into a drawing, and put the appropriate GD and T costs on that. So you get a consistent product every time, I think, is becoming a for some engineers kind of a lost art. I think it's definitely important, important skills to have. I'd say second is really that. Really, what would I I kind of want to, I want to end more on the design thinking. But I think that I will hit on that. And that the design thinking is really important to me as well. Having that creative problem solving mind, I think is a very important skill to have as well. And, you know, being able to apply that and then translate that into drawings again. That's, that's fantastic.

Aaron Moncur:

Great, great. You mentioned communication first. And I have to agree that if you can't communicate, you know, you might as well go be a hermit and live out in the woods, right? What? What are some tools that you've picked up? Some best practices for communicating with others? I don't know any books that you've read or like seminars that you've attended?

Alex Kim:

Yeah, yeah, I think you hit on one earlier, that's really important to me and so much has made in my LinkedIn profile is start with y. Right? I think starting with y is very important concept to me, I'm actually reading another book right now called the Culture Map. And they talked about, there's, if you look across the world, you can break up the world into either applications driven or principle driven people, applications driven people, meaning, if I'm presenting something to you, I want to hear about how this works. In the scenario we're talking about. Whereas if I'm a principle driven person, if I'm asking you about how this works, I want to know why it works and start from there. But really, the key to talking to either of these people is really to start with that, why? And approach it with that principle driven mentality in that you're starting with the why. And then if you're working with more application driven people you quickly work into, okay, here's the use case. Here's how it works. Oh, that was the principal. If you're just dealing with principle driven people, you just stick with the why for a little bit longer. And you answer more of those questions on the conceptual side. So if I think for me, engineer, being an engineer and being able to think through what are the concepts that really drive this allow me to be creative and how I approach problem solving, not just with? Oh, well, at my previous job, I've done this before, I think that really allows you to have a more open mind and like, accepting new solutions, new way to do things. I really believe in that. I think that, yeah, start with why. Yeah, I love big books and applies not just for talking to people, but also with the engineering as well.

Aaron Moncur:

I also love that you use the name of our podcast, and that explanation, right? Being an engineer for the unintentional plug.

Alex Kim:

I have a theory that all movies are terrible unless they say the name of the movie in the movie, right? So

Aaron Moncur:

Oh, interesting. So this weekend now when I'm watching the movie, exactly.

Alex Kim:

I didn't hear them say well, I didn't hear them say a dark night. So how is this a good movie? Right? Okay,

Aaron Moncur:

what's gonna need to brand you need to brand that this has to be like the the Alex Kim naming theory for movies, or we need to put a brand it'll be like

Alex Kim:

a Rotten Tomatoes score thing. Eventually. Oh,

Aaron Moncur:

there you go. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. All right. I'm gonna jump out of engineering for just a minute here. Sure. Apparently, you love to travel and have done some travel to date. How has that travel? I don't know, given you a new perspective. And has it influenced in any way? Your your role as an engineer?

Alex Kim:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I do love to travel. I think I mentioned earlier that my my dad actually so he was a law enforcement officer but actually retired and became a security guard for United Airlines. And so up until recently, I could just kind of hop on a plane and go anywhere. Wow, I do. I do love to travel. Boy, it's definitely a blessing to have that. So nice, nice birthday as but I think that traveling, I didn't do much travel as a kid because that wasn't my my dad's priority at the time getting older. He's like, I want to travel, I'm gonna start working for United Airlines. I think traveling has really opened my eyes to understanding just different cultures in that. How do you? How do different cultures deal with the same problem. And just you can see so many different approaches, the way people communicate in order to get things done, the way people problem solve, to get things done, whether they're doing going for a high tech solution, or a low tech solution. And this is all non engineering, right? Just anytime they're dealing with anything, how do how do cultures respond, right? Do they do in a social manner or, you know, someone comes across a problem, they just try to deal with it themselves, with themselves and those sorts of things. But on the engineering side, I think it's been absolutely fascinating, the more I travel, right, so whether that in Europe when you're going on public transit, and you're seeing the way that they do ticketing systems, or if you're what was one in particular, there was another one, when I was in Argentina, looking at they had there was an old building that I was at, and just looking at the way that the the architecture was done, because you could see the influence from the Spanish, but also the German that had come in haven't been to Spain, in Germany, you could see how all of those influences came in and created this building. And the architecture styles are they talked about in Spain itself, you've got Moorish architecture, which comes from more of the Muslim world, a lot of that architecture, but mixed with the Catholic side as well. So you come up with this weird thing that just ends up looking really cool. In the end. That's a lot of my belief in engineering. Everyone brings a unique perspective to the table, let's bring those all together and make a great product in the end.

Aaron Moncur:

Well said very well said. This is kind of a nebulous question. And okay, so don't don't think too deeply about it, just just say the first thing that comes to mind, let's see what happens. If you and within the context of your daily engineering role, have you had a magic wand could wave this magic wand and change one thing? What would it be?

Alex Kim:

Change one thing? What would it be? I don't want to say get rid of quality systems. Now.

Aaron Moncur:

You can say anything, you have a magic wand.

Alex Kim:

If if I had that magic wand, I would have something that records everything for me, because I think that's really, you know, it's not, you know, I was joking there and saying, you know, get rid of quality. But quality is really important, because I'm looking at drawings from, like, 20 years ago that engineers and made and you know, there weren't good quality systems in place. So I'm struggling trying to parse through it and find out what's going on with X machine or, you know, X product. And so, you know, I see the need for quality now. So I think for me, I know engineers, a lot of time, we just want to get our hand in the dirt and really get to work, crunch the numbers, get things working, get tinkering, make the thing. So I think would really help is if there was something to take notes for me. Right and take notes really well. And so that way the paperwork is done for me. I can just create. I think that would be

Aaron Moncur:

yes. Ah, I love it. Yeah. So something that would just do all the documentation for you, the engineering change orders, all that stuff is taken care of, and you just get the pure creation. Yeah,

Alex Kim:

exactly, exactly.

Aaron Moncur:

Okay. So think about the last time you started a new project, new design project? Or maybe you're building some automation or something like that? Do you have a kind of standard design process that you go through? Do you have like a mental checklist? Or maybe it's not mental, but some kind of checklist that you go through? When you start a new design or engineering project?

Alex Kim:

Yeah, I think that I really have something or a process that I really go to. It's been really heavily influenced by the different companies I've worked for, and a lot of my undergrad schooling, as well as things like six sigma, Lean Six Sigma as well. Being able to draw from all those influences, I think really gives me a focus on first defining the problem and define that well, so and define the problem at a high level, understand what my mission statement is. And then from there, being able to define what are the user needs, and what are really the requirements from there. Being able to have those ideas allows me to ideate come up with designs, come up with drawings and just sketch around Under or think through ideas, think through different processes. And then from there be able to prototype, you know, what they say is right DND, V and V and then go to production, right. You know, along the way, there's other steps along the way, especially in, you know, medical technology biotech, as far as assessing risks, and doing those quality system things. But all all great things I think I picked up I think, even on the side, sometimes I'm just making FMEA s, for daily life. I feel like I'm like, What's my RPN? Here? Right? How do I mitigate? Like, how do I, like stop my sourdough bread from burning in my oven, right, or something like that? So I'd say that is really my process. I think that I had mentioned in brief that we had been working on COVID-19 project at Thermo Fisher. And so we were really just like, everyone, this has really come out of the blue for us, right? We had an idea of things are coming out, or these things were happening. But really getting to scale and having to scale, if you if you see, our CEO actually went and talked to or was talking at the White House a few days ago, talked about how we're going to be making 10 million tests per week going forward. That really came out of the blue, right? And so the world needs it. And so there's that need there for everyone. But being really strong, fundamentally, in your engineering process, and in your engineering design skills, allow us to move quickly. And understanding how do we how do we bring in the proper automation to produce at this level, but also what can we do in the meantime, so that way, we can bridge this gap. Even if it's kind of makeshift, put on the engineering cap, let's just make this work for now. And then bringing all that full scale fully thought out engineering on the way, the kind of the we had those prototype, bridge gapping or sorry, gap bridging, bridging gapping, bridging the gap, bridging the gap steps in there. And then really bringing in that big, big clunky, but really fast, really effective, really accurate machines are now on their way.

Aaron Moncur:

Nice, nice. Can you share either one success or a failure? And what you learned from that experience?

Alex Kim:

Sure. Sure. That's a great question. And recency bias for me, right, and that I'm talking about this COVID-19 projects I've been working so heavily on. So I think that one of my greatest successes was being able to convert one of our, we have a TI TI can robotic liquid handling and robot arm. liquid handling machine. And so we actually converted one from an r&d setting to production that can do $60 per minute, right. And I was chiefly in charge of that the getting the ideas for that, converting over the software and making sure we have the appropriate things to be able to validate that for our quality systems and do that quickly. So that way, we could meet the 5 million files per week quota as of a few weeks ago. million a week. Yes, yeah. So that was from the get goes like, we need to make this work we need even if we had to run it for 24 hours a day, you know, seven days a week, we'll make it work. And so initially, we're really doing a lot of pipetting by hand, because you're not used to this type of scale that people are asking for. But being able to convert one of the machines that we had in house that just was not used for this, customize the software and then validate I think was one of the great successes of my career because I think that allowed us to not only double our capacity, and that we could also we can manually pipette these vials, when also use the automated machine. So doubling our capacity, but also taking the human element out of it, removing some of the human error that could occur and also more ergonomic just relying on a robot for liquid handling instead of the people. On that same note with this machine, we should have had I in my opinion should have had this machine a couple of days earlier. And so one of my on the note of one of my greatest successes, we should have been able to use the machine a few days earlier. And so what happened was during the validation phase during our qualification, I had Miss assess how to best control the process mean that in between different batches of filling vials the what we'd see is a change a decrease in precision as the runs went on and that had to do with the system liquid inside the machine because we're only filling you know less than less than like 100 microliters of fluid in each of these And so the system liquid pressure really matters. And so even with doing some quick engineering studies, I thought I'd really gotten a grip on how to best control the processes, but failed in that. I understood the processes within each batch, but not between each batch. And so Okay, moving too quickly had we kind of missed that. And so as a result, we spent three days trying to qualify, or three days trying to qualify the machine, only to have it fail and immediately run it again. So I regret that because to me, that's three days of Miss Prescott that we could have had. The number I'm not, I'm not sure how much we'll say. But to me, every test kit matters right now. And so I personally feel the burden of that. And so I wanted to make sure when we ended up validate, it was strong, it was robust. So I put my all my effort in to make sure that this machine is working. And that now we have three of these machines in house. So we have plenty of capacity to do this. And these were all done right the first time.

Aaron Moncur:

Well, great story, thank you for sharing that. There's that that balance, right, you need to get things done fast. But our engineering manager here at Pipeline, he always says, if you need to get something done fast, slow down. And it I get it, and it sounds right. But then there's the other side of you. That's like, Yeah, but we also have to do it fast. Right? This is balanced balance, right? It's hard to strike the right balance. It

Alex Kim:

is it is definitely, you know, one of my co workers, really, I think, to me to try my best, he actually called it when we're in the middle of this whole process. He was like, you know, I'm like, you know, Patrick are our normal speed. I feel like it's just really slow. And he was like, well, on the other hand, you don't want to be in chicken with your head cut off mode the entire time. And that's never the speed you want to run at, you know, at some point that felt like we were running at that speed for a little bit, but I think it was a, you know, lessons learned and everything worked out in the end. Yeah,

Aaron Moncur:

yeah, it's a balance. All right. Last question. For you, Alex. Let's pretend that it is 1015 years from now. And you're looking back on what you've done, what your career has been those past 1015 years, of course, you still have plenty of career to go after that. But let's say we're 1015 years into it. What has to have happened for you to feel happy and satisfied with your progress as a person? And as an engineer? Yeah, that's a that's a great question. This is always airview. Aaron, what is this? This deep on? Each Other?

Alex Kim:

Definitely. Yeah, definitely a deep question. But, you know, it's something I've thought about, because I think that, for me, I've seen so many engineers, drop off from engineering, you know, I think being an engineering allows you to have such great thinking processes, you really can do anything in business. But for me, I really do love the engineering aspect of something that I want to stick with. So for me, I would I see myself and I have to look back and 15 years or so, if I have started a company and being able to make a product that people are using, that people believe in, and that positively impacts their lives. I think that that would be a success. For me, I think that being able to create a product, again, that directly impacts people's lives, I really love that as my mission. I think that's really important to me. And if the finances come with it, I think that the money is something that I want to be able to I was always taught, you know, make it make your product. And then when you can't give you give back to community get back to that community that did so much to lift you up, because it takes a village, right. So being able to, you know, in 15 years, maybe more than maybe there's more than 15 years from now thing but say 2025 years from now, being able to have create a new product, start that company and and change the lives of others and give back with those successes I think would really be that goal for me. That would be that. Okay, checkbox. I've done it. And that's that,

Aaron Moncur:

that's terrific. That's terrific. It's one thing I love about product development, right is you look back on it. And there's this tangible theme that you can hold in your hands that came from nothing, right? It did not exist. It was a thought in someone's head. And then a couple years later, it's this thing that you can hold and actually do something useful. Just not many things that give me greater fulfillment than than that

Alex Kim:

I totally agree. And that's what I give a lot of my software engineer friends crap about so Like, real things.

Aaron Moncur:

You're just ones and zeros.

Alex Kim:

Props to the mechanical engineers out there.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah. All right. Well, Alex, thank you so much for your time. This has been just a wonderfully delightful conversation. I so appreciate you sharing some of your thoughts and insights with us. So thank you again.

Alex Kim:

Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me on. It's been nice just being able to talk to another engineer that's really aligned with a lot of what my mission is, and, you know, understand where we come from, in this product side of things, this engineering side of things. So, but awesome. So Randy Brown, thank

Aaron Moncur:

you. Happy to be that sounding board. Yeah, for sure. Sure, for sure. I'm Aaron Moncure, founder of pipeline design, and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a positive review. It really helps other people find the show. To learn how your engineering team can leverage our team's expertise in developing turnkey custom test fixtures, automated equipment and product design, visit us at test fixture design.com Thanks for listening