Being an Engineer

S1E11 Farm Boys Make the Best Engineers | Tommy Davis

June 03, 2020 Tommy Davis Season 1 Episode 11
Being an Engineer
S1E11 Farm Boys Make the Best Engineers | Tommy Davis
Show Notes Transcript

From welding together home-grown farm tools to sophisticated statistics for assessing risk management, hear how Tommy Davis has progressed his career as an engineer. Also, learn first hand about the benefits of being a PE (Professional Engineer) and certified six sigma black belt! Connect with Tommy through West Pharmaceutical.  

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 Tommy Davis, who graduated with his engineering degree from Texas and M University in 1986. earned his Texas professional engineering license in 1990. And has worked for many different companies including Bristol Myers Squibb, argon medical future matrix, Texas Medical and currently West pharmaceutical developing products ranging from critical care catheters to surgical instruments. Tommy, welcome to the show. Thanks, sir.

Tommy Davis:

Glad to be here.

Aaron Moncur:

All right. So I'm going to start this off with what hopefully is is a simple question. Why did you decide to become an engineer? What was it about engineering that interested you and what what motivated you to pursue a career as an engineer,

Tommy Davis:

so I guess, several thing there and as a, as a kid, I grew up on a farm. And growing up on a farm really just was around a lot of different interesting pieces of equipment, and had access to a lot of tools and a lot of things to work on, and always some sort of problem to solve. So my dad was very supportive, and really pushed me to, you know, to take on different projects and different things. And so really, really learn to solve problems and sort of think through things very young. And I was just pushed, and that carried over into the, I guess, into my high school years, where I was very active in FFA, and four h and really got involved in a lot of sort of design competitions and projects where I was able to fulfill, you know, design and build things, take them to the to the local payers and, you know, manage to have some folks come and say, Hey, can you can you design this for me and build it for me, and I'll sort of start there. And then as I, you know, entered into, into college, I really started looking for something that, you know, aligned with my interest. And in this calculated on engineering, I didn't really have any engineers in the family. But I had some friends that wanted the engineering and the sort of join in with him and just sort of went out there. And honestly, I can't imagine doing anything. After all, after all these years, it was just sort of a, I guess, a luck of the draw, so to speak. And I really had my sights set on you early on that was probably headed in that direction, unknowingly.

Aaron Moncur:

You know, it's so funny that you mentioned growing up on a farm because I have heard multiple people say to me independently that the best engineers they know, grew up on a farm. And it must be something about I don't know, fixing tractors and just using what's around to make machinery work. Can you remember any? Any things that you fixed or maybe even designed from scratch back during your days on the farm?

Tommy Davis:

Oh, absolutely. My dad always wanted a way to level his his roads in his pasture, and up around his barn and those kinds of things. And so he always wanted a blade of sorts to pull behind his tractor. And he was really just too cheap to go and buy one. And so I saw one that, you know, that a neighbor had made and my dad said, you know, if I bought you the steel, Could you could you make me one of those? And so, you know, he took me over and I measured this thing up, and he even even bought me a welding machine. He put it out in our kind of farm shop and before he knew that I had to suddenly pull it All the different things. And so that was probably one of my first big projects that that I made. And later you know, I made different kinds of gates and hinges and just about anything you can imagine, we had a pretty generous scrap pile of metal, things that we always kept and collected. So, you know, I was allowed to go and kind of have Have my way with a scrap pile, so to speak, and always making these different projects and the word got out, you know, the community, I live in a really small community and all the old farmers would come up with this project or that, and my dad got a real kick out of that. Sort of fat, the habit, I guess, really, you know, inspired me to go further. But it was a lot of fun. And I yeah, there's, there's so many problems to solve on a farm. And, you know, there's a lot of innovation and ingenuity that you have an opportunity to, to exercise there, in that in that environment.

Aaron Moncur:

What a magical experience that must have been, and I'm sure your dad was so proud and pleased of you for being able to do all that. It sounds like just the best proving grounds imaginable for a young budding engineer. Yeah, it

Unknown:

was very, like said he was very supportive and always encouraging me. And it was fun to see, you know, I think engineers love to admire what they're able to accomplish after it's done. So, you know, when you can finish one of those things as a kid you especially proud, especially when people recognize it, sort of as your own and encourage you, it really is very inspirational.

Aaron Moncur:

How old were you when you started welding.

Unknown:

So it was really my freshman year of high school. So we had a organization called Future Farmers of America, FFA. And I was in that in my, in my freshman year of high school, and one of the, one of the modules that we did was excelling, welding and cutting, you know, with a torch, and then also arc welding. And so, you know, I was pretty good at it, I had an interest in it early on. And so, you know, when I brought home the first couple of samples that I did in class, my dad, he was just beside himself, so he runs out and buys me, you know, it was, like an arc welder that you could plug into your 20s. There you go, is off to the races from there.

Aaron Moncur:

I'm guessing that arc welder was a good investment for both you and your your father. Yeah, you know, it was

Unknown:

it was not only just hated alone, but we had so many things around the farm to repair. And once I kind of learned to use it pretty well, we didn't have to, you know, go to town to the welding shop to get more jobs out there.

Aaron Moncur:

That's terrific. Well, fast forwarding a little bit. So you've graduated now and you start looking at this thing called a PE license, a professional, your professional engineering license? What what are some of the reasons that prompted you to consider getting your license and then, you know, how long did that process take? And what was the preparation like?

Unknown:

So I knew very early on I wanted to do that was really a goal. I had, I guess, coming out of college, and I had a an individual an engineer, I would say he was really a mentor type, you know, that was already a professional engineer and sort of doing my college years, I had an opportunity to do some drafting and design as I was, you know, as I was going through my coursework, and this individual was just this really sort of took me under his wing. And you know, talk to me about it and important to that. You know, what, what it would mean to me in different situations and so he really inspired me to do it. And so I started really working on it, I guess the college preparing, you know, took the took the Yachty as I as I accident, Texas anything in those days It was about a year long process, I guess, to get the application and get all the requirements met, and then they have to do like a review. And this is really, I got a date myself, this is really before the PC EDA, so you didn't have email and all that sort of thing, this is back when they literally boxed up your key applications, they're in the state and ups to various reviewers around the state. So it took quite a long time to, to hit all the different board members that did the review, it was about a year as I was doing. And it was, you know, it was very interesting, you, you had to have experience working with a number of different communities that we're familiar with your work and could vouch for you were, you know, that for your work, you're sort of character. And also, you had to demonstrate that you had, you know, a command of, of your profession, in the kinds of work that you did. So it was a lot of a lot of writing, describing that, but it took about a year as I remember,

Aaron Moncur:

how has how has having your, your PE license helped you in your career.

Unknown:

So in Texas, and I don't know about other states, but in Texas, if you want to practice as an engineer in the, in the public, and advertise yourself as an engineer or engineering services, you have to have your PE license. And so it's really a prerequisite to that and and also in Texas, you you have to have a firm registration and associated with that has to be at least one PE within that. And so for me, it was, it was important, because I wanted to do, you know, I had I had some aspiration to practice privately as an individual, and have my own business, you know, similar to what you do. And so I did do in addition to the work that I listed there, and I do, I did consulting for a number of years, you know, and, and was able to do that because of my PE it's a, you know, something, I think anyone that, at least in Texas, if you aspire to do that, it's it's got to be a requirement from the state that you that you have that in your credentials, and they will check it up and monitor for you, you know, via the web and in their surveillance to assure that if you're out practicing your craft that you got that, you know, as a credential,

Aaron Moncur:

how hard was the test? What was it kind of like any old college final exam, or was it much more comprehensive and challenging.

Unknown:

So again, I'm gonna date myself in those days, it was, it was a, I guess, a time that you had to spend practicing, and you had to show evidence. And you didn't have to take a test, you had to take the EI t test, not the principles of practice and call it so I can only tell you, my oldest son is also a PE and just recently took his and I did see his materials that he was studying in it, you know, it's pretty, it's pretty challenging. He was able to take it past the first time but it's, you know, it touches on a lot of areas and but if you're, you know, if you're practicing using all of those things that you are, you know, it's just put put into practice and demonstrating you got to come in with that.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, yeah, one of the greatest days of my life was the day I turned in my thesis after completing my master's degree, and I knew I had no more tests in front of me. So the idea of going back and taking the PE exam is just giving me like nightmares already. Alright, so in addition to having your PE license, you also are certified as a Six Sigma Black Belt. Can you take just a few minutes and and share? What does it mean to have your Six Sigma Black Belt? What all does that entail? What skills do you gain when you become certified as a black belt? And maybe what what prompted you to to get that

Unknown:

so that I was at some point in my career where West, they offered to allow me to, to enroll in a Six Sigma Black Belt program. And really, it's, it's about problem solving and methodology to really understand, you know, how to how to identify and solve problems, and understand variability and processes and, you know, performance of systems and products. And so, I was working in r&d at the time and sort of was extended an operative to get into this. And it was, it was about four months of training a week at a time consecutively. And then you had a basically a euro project that you had to do to, to get the, you know, to get for the committee and show that you had a mastery of the, all the different elements of that. And then you had an exam at the, at the end of that to, you know, to get your certificate, so to speak. And so a lot of, you know, a lot of tools and techniques, and a lot of I guess statistics and design of experiments and different ways to slice and dice data to understand, you know, sources of variability and, and kind of where to focus your effort to try to solve a problem really is a lot in processes, you know, mold injection molding processes, you can use it in machining, you know, to optimize machining processes, or, or just kind of, you know, chase down problems in those areas and try to understand how to how to solve them.

Aaron Moncur:

Can you think of a specific example, a project that you worked on, where you were able to use some of the training you gain from the Six Sigma Black Belt, to benefit the development of that product?

Unknown:

Oh, absolutely. So probably one of the more recent ones was I worked on I was working on a drug delivery system, or for particular customer, and it had, you know, some performance characteristics that needed to be met, and we just weren't meeting them initially, so was able to, you know, design a, designing experiments with different variables, that you could feed into the design of experiment, run the analysis, and be able to come back and sort of focus on the areas that were probably the likely contributors, and then create, you know, things like regression models and prediction models that would allow you to, to, you know, sort of dial in and refine different aspects of it. So, ultimately was able to, you know, solve the problem and get to a point where you can meet the requirement.

Aaron Moncur:

Nice, I love that hearing real world applications for engineering. And it works. It's a really,

Unknown:

it's a very, it's a great tool. And, you know, honestly, you're and I love statistics, and I go back from time to time and try to take something you know, either out at ASU, or some other college that's close to where I am, and just pick up you know, more skills there because it's a, it can be really useful.

Aaron Moncur:

Well, another one of your unique skills is risk management, can you share a few best practices that you follow for mitigating risk when developing new products?

Unknown:

So, I like to, you know, I use a lot of a lot of FMEA analysis and so, one of the things I like to do and the approach that I like to take with FMEA as one of the first steps is to really take a product apart and look at all of the different features on each of the components. And I call it a feature function now. And so you know, if you if you look at every Bob and Crick and cranny and hole and feature on that component, and then you you know, assign it a name and a feature number. As you start to build out your email, you can start to start to build lines where you know, those different features interact with one another You can, you can start to understand, you know what, what can go wrong. And as you go through that you can look and you know, start scoring that out and coming up with ways to mitigate that. So very, very useful. I think

Aaron Moncur:

we've done quite a few FMEA s, and they take some time, right? It's not like you're gonna spend half an hour or 60 minutes on this and be done, they can take quite a while, what have you found to be kind of the balance between between when doing an FMEA is necessary? And when you can get by without one?

Unknown:

So I think it's all about risk, right, I think you have to look at what kind of risk are you talking about? You know, is it? Is it? The nature of that failure? Is, is it? You know, is it laughs threatening? Is it a nuisance? Is it kind of a low risk type of a thing? It is an investment, as you say, takes a lot of time if you do it right. And it takes takes a lot of people, you know, I think females that are done just by an individual, or maybe not as valuable, as you know, a team that really looks at it from a lot of different perspectives. But I don't know, it's, it's, it's about, you know, investment versus benefit. Yes. Yeah. It's like, you know, some products, medical devices, you just don't have a choice, you've got to do that. It's expecting other things, maybe it's more of a choice?

Aaron Moncur:

Well, it's exactly what you were saying, right? It's an assessment of risk. And for a medical device, typically, the risk can be life threatening, or fairly severe. So that's, that's a really good answer depends on the risk. What can you think of one of the most mechanically complex devices that you have helped to design? And if you had to design that device? Again, knowing what you do now? What would you do differently?

Unknown:

Oh, gosh, probably probably the most complex mechanical devices that I've been involved in, or probably some of these drug delivery systems that I've worked on in the last few years, there's lots of moving parts, right? There's motors, electric motors, there's gears, there's plastic, or stamp components, there's all of these different things that have to mesh and interact and withstand lots of different conditions. And I think, you know, material choices is really a big thing to consider, upfront. You really need to understand the requirements, those systems really, really well, before you ever, you know, put the pen to paper so to speak. If you don't, you're probably going to miss something. And that other probably, you know, we're out stumbled in my career is not really spending enough time trying to understand those requirements, whether it be you know, temperature requirement, or some sort of other environmental challenge that you're gonna see later on when you got kind of into the testing phase. And so, you know, tip Platt with plastic captures a big one, right? Pre those things usually will get you and your environmental conditioning or in shelf life, things really start to show up, maybe when you didn't expect. So I think understanding your material, understanding what it can do, under different conditions, really are important to understand.

Aaron Moncur:

I think the requirements document is huge. And it's so easy to maybe not put the amount of effort that you should into a requirements document, because everyone's excited about the new project, you know, engineers, inherently, we just want to jump in and start designing something and it kind of takes a little bit of self control to hold ourselves back initially and say well, before we jump into the CAD Blocks, let's let's take a look at the requirements and make sure everyone is very, very clear on what exactly these requirements are. Would you agree?

Unknown:

Oh, absolutely. I think you know, one of the other big things that I've seen bull projects that is kind of easy to light. These are requirements that come in various shapes. The project, scope creep, yeah, you've already committed to architecture, you've probably invested a lot in tooling. And so having some requirement that comes in very light that really balls up your, your design in your investment you've made most of your schedule, and your budget ultimately, only makes you about your customer, and happy.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, I remember reading an engineering book, back when I was in a young, much younger engineer, and it was talking about the costs associated with changes at different times during the development process. And oh, it was it was, you know, a 10x scale. So a change at the very beginning of a project doesn't really have much effect on the overall cost. It's just, you know, 1x change. But the further you get in, it's not the 10x cost and a little bit further into the project. Now, it's 100x cost, and towards the end of a project, it might be 1,000x costs to introduce this new requirement or design change. So it adds up pretty quickly. Yeah, absolutely. I

Unknown:

think that's an accurate, accurate assessment.

Aaron Moncur:

Well, you've held positions ranging from ranging from a design engineer through director of r&d. What, what is your favorite role? And, and why?

Unknown:

Well, you know, I'm an engineer, I love to design I love to love to get on, you know, on the board, so to speak, and pencil to paper. And nowadays, you know, CAD, I love that, that's really what makes me go as, but as you moved in your career, and you start managing, you know, others and kind of taking a more, you know, remove role, I guess from from the design part of that, I really get a lot of enjoyment, a lot of joy from seeing others come along and mature, you know, as engineers and, and take on more, kind of more responsibility and see, see success there. So I, I like that, to be honest, I enjoy the people side of it a lot, too. So, I don't know, it's part of part of me, misses the, you know, the design engineer role. But, but there's also a lot of joy, you know, a lot of fulfillment, self fulfillment, I guess, in being able to manage others as well and help them grow and mature.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, passing on some of that hard earned wisdom. So speaking of more of a managerial director, mentor role, like you're in right now, what are some of the challenges some of the big challenges that you see, as let's say, specifically as an r&d Director?

Unknown:

So I think, you know, it's a big a big challenge, I think often is recruiting. The, you know, finding the people that are that really enjoy that aspect of engineering, I think, you know, different engineers enjoy different kinds of environments in. I've found that in r&d, sometimes it's hard to find that person that really enjoys that aspect of, of engineering. You know, the ones that do really live it. And when I, when I have had to go out and recruit, sometimes it takes some time, it takes a long time to find that person. And I think part of that is probably the economy that we're in, you know, it's a very good time to be an engineer. They, they're very much in demand. And so I think that's part of part of that as well. And I know that that's probably probably one of the bigger challenges I've seen.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, you know, I've heard others echo that same comments. Recruiting is just really difficult all across the board. Yeah. Well, you've I'm going to apologize beforehand, because I'm going to date you a little bit here. You've been an engineer for almost 35 years now. How is the industry different now than it was when you graduated in the 80s?

Unknown:

Oh, my goodness. So, you know, when I when I came out of, I came out of college, we had You know, PCs were just coming on. So if it was kind of a new thing to sit down and find a PC, we, you know, when I did programming, for example, it was Fortran and we use punch cards. And there was no, you know, there was no PC that you sat down and did your CAD work on it was, was all done on a drafting board with a, you know, with a landholder and a sharpener. So I'm really dating myself now, but there's so many tools today, you know, that engineers have available to them, to help them to get their work done, there's, there's great CAD packages out there. You know, it's, it's so amazing what you can do with those packages now, in terms of just being able to visualize what you're doing three dimensionally. And not only yourself, but to be able to take that and to communicate to others what what you're doing, you know, with, with a, with a web, and with all the different tools that you have to share that all over the world, not just in your office, but globally, and it's just amazing, where technology has brought us to FDA top tools, all the, you know, the different packages, you mentioned, Risk Manager, but earlier, it was great risk management packages out there that are Can, can do great, you know, analysis with that, as opposed to billing them, you know, line by line, which is, you know, tedious. But, uh, I think that I think also, you know, the curriculums that you see coming out now, with it with engineers that are graduating are, are more rounded, I guess, you know, they, I see black, the engineers, the young guys that I recruit, are so much better rounded, maybe than what I felt like I was when I came, they've been exposed to a lot of, you know, a lot of different things. And maybe when I was as a as an undergrad. So

Aaron Moncur:

that's a really interesting insight. I wonder, clearly, the design tools we have nowadays, you mentioned CAD and simulation packages, FDA, that kind of thing. Clearly, there's some tremendous benefits to using those. Have you noticed at all that, because these tools kind of do a lot of the fundamentals for us? Have you seen any detriment? In terms of engineers not not understanding the fundamentals as well? Or has that just not really been a problem that you've seen that has come along with some of these more advanced tools? Oh,

Unknown:

that's, that. That's a funny one, I have to, I have to say, you know, I'll give you an example. If I was going to work out I, you know, sort of a draft angle or something like that, I would probably pick up my calculator, use a trig function on my calculator that the young guys a lot of times they go, What are you doing? That in

Aaron Moncur:

Sketch? Yeah, yeah.

Unknown:

And I mean, you get to the same place, you know, ultimately, they're just taken advantage of the tools. And, and I think, yeah, I don't see any, any. You know, any problem with that is a just observing, I think, in a lot of ways. They're, you know, the engineers, as I said, I think are much better prepared, because they come out with much more grounded in a lot of ways.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Well, what, what changes do you expect we'll see in the engineering industry over the next, you know, five or 10 years,

Unknown:

I think, you know, the, I think the CAD analysis packages, that CAD is just gonna keep improving, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna have better, better tools to work with that are more probably even collaborative than they are today where multiple people can work on the same thing. I think that's going to continue. I think, an exciting one that I see is this additive manufacturing. You know, I know that a lot of folks are using those different kinds of technologies today. And, you know, from a product development standpoint, you know, that has just cut so much time offered the development process being able to go from CAD to prototypes in the same day, I think is as we go forward, that, you know, keep developing better materials and, you know, newer technologies are gonna let us just get better and better and do more things that we can't do today.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, that's pretty revolutionary. Yeah. Well, Tommy, to end here, how can people get a hold of you? Or have West? You know, maybe I'm a young engineer just about to graduate and I want a shot at being hired by a West or maybe I'm looking for a mentor or I don't know, whatever the case is, is there a preferred method for people to get a hold of you or west?

Unknown:

Absolutely. So if you want to look at West as the employment opportunities, if you go to West pharmaceutical, on the web, there is a career portal there. And so they post all the job openings. And those those update, you know, often, as a matter of fact, I am looking as we speak for for new engineers, for mechanical engineers, and one electrical software engineer, so, and this is just, you know, this is all the time, I think, in total today, just there in Scottsdale, we're looking for 13 new engineers just in r&d. Wow, I would encourage anyone that's looking, you know, to get perhaps in the medical device industry, to go and take a look at the West Portal. And you can apply there online. And, you know, there'll be a corporate recruiter that that will reach out to you. It you know, you're always free to email me as well, I think. Maybe my email is posted there. If not, you can reach me at Tommy T om m y, dot Davis, da vi s, AP, West pharma.com. So either either one of those two ways, or you can find me on LinkedIn as well. Reach out to me they're

Aaron Moncur:

fantastic. All right. Well, Tommy, thank you so much for spending some time together today. It's been great just learning about your background and your history and some of the insights that you've been able to share. So thank you for your service, as an engineer, and and for the time that you spent on the podcast today.

Tommy Davis:

Thank you, you're really appreciate opportunity.

Aaron Moncur:

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