Jesseca exudes love for the engineering craft. Her sincere passion for what she does is so evident as she shares her experiences working in automation, understanding customer needs, and creating highly detailed and precise documentation. When most of us engineers would just as soon throw the documentation side of development “over the wall”, Jesseca thrives producing drawings, user guides, & other engineering related communication.
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
Jesseca exudes love for the engineering craft. Her sincere passion for what she does is so evident as she shares her experiences working in automation, understanding customer needs, and creating highly detailed and precise documentation. When most of us engineers would just as soon throw the documentation side of development “over the wall”, Jesseca thrives producing drawings, user guides, & other engineering related communication.
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
Welcome to the being an engineer podcast. Our guest today is Jessica Lyons who is a mechanical engineer has held several positions ranging from City Planning and Infrastructure to verification and validation testing, to creating setup and users guides and has served in varied roles such as product development engineer, consultant, and customer success expert. Jessica, welcome to the show. Nice to be here. Well, you were introduced to me by John spear, who is the founder of Greenlight guru, where you currently work and the way he introduced you to me was was really interesting. In the it was an email. And in the subject of the email, it said, Jessica loves being an engineer with loves all in caps. And so I thought, well, this is someone whose passion and enthusiasm for engineering has has is so apparent and contagious that the job just felt compelled to make this introduction. So I'm very excited to talk to you today. And let's maybe start right there. What is it that you love all caps? About being an engineer? And and how did you decide that you wanted to become an engineer.
Jesseca Lyons:So that's, that's definitely I love everything about being an engineer, it's actually hard to narrow it down. But I think what I love the most, is that through engineering, I get to help so many different people. And that what I get to do every day, will literally in some way, shape or form touch every single person in this entire world. And there is no greater feeling than knowing that you have that kind of an impact. That's a powerful statement.
Aaron Moncur:I'm okay, I'm just gonna do it. I'm gonna throw caution to the wind. Let's just jump into I was going to wait until a little bit later. But let's jump in right now. What what are maybe one or two of the projects that you've worked on where after you finished, you look back and you thought, wow, this really is making an impact, like I'm affecting, in a positive way people's lives.
Jesseca Lyons:So for the last four years, I've been at Greenlight guru, and literally every single thing I do every single day is going to do that. So what I get to do is I get to work with customers all over the world, who are designing and developing medical devices and bringing them to market. And so what I'm doing is I'm helping them understand from good design engineering principles, you know, what are design controls? How do we document on? How do we think about risk management? From the quality and regulatory standpoint of how do we follow all of these rules and regulations that are out there? So that what we're doing is not only this really awesome, novel, cool thing to do, but also safe and effective and able to help people down the road?
Aaron Moncur:Okay, does that ever? I think I know the answer. But I'm gonna almost facetiously ask the question doesn't ever get boring for you working on, like the design inputs and the quality side of things, as opposed to like doing the, you know, the CAD design and benchtop testing? And what are your thoughts on that?
Jesseca Lyons:So I understand that a lot of people are like, okay, like, you're an engineer, what do you mean that you want to do like documentation? Does documentation engineer, right? Like, that's really the question here? Yeah, so one, I loved all of the hands on like testing that I got to do. So you know, one of the coolest things as an engineer is that you get to, you know, build your widget, and you get to test it and break it and play with it and figure out what happens with it. And there's nothing cooler than that. But what I get to do is actually better describe what it is that I want to make, so that somebody else can't make a mistake down the road. They can't mess it up. Like it's, it's purely exactly what I wanted it to be. And if you do design controls, right, and like you really truly understand the essence of what design controls are getting at. It's not documentation. It's not paperwork. It's it's not quality, as everybody wants to try to bucket it. Like it's real engineering.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, that there's something a how do I phrase it almost, divinely satisfying about structuring something and then seeing it executed in exactly the way that you put it together? Yeah, Spoken like a true engineer there. Okay. You have said that one of the best parts about being an engineer is being able to use your skills to help customers. Where did this focus on customer satisfaction come from?
Jesseca Lyons:So it probably came from one of my first jobs so really,at Beckman Coulter when I was in there integrated solutions to customer engineering.group, they're like, everything that we did was always about the customer. And I realized that, you know, we all talk about the customer as like the person who ends up using it. And like, you know, hey, we designed this system, we put it all together. So they have a great job, that they can do what they need to do. But it became more than that. And I realized just how broad customers were. So like, I really needed to make it easy to install for the field service engineers, they're setting it up, they're installing it, they're getting it working, like if they can't read my manuals, and they can't understand what to do, then the customer will never even be able to use it. And then the customer themselves, they need to be able to use it seamlessly like they, we want to make it so that they don't even have to think about what they're doing. So they can really get to their job. Like it's a facilitation of them being able to do their research, their design, development, whatever it is that they're doing. None of our products should ever stand in the way of a customer doing their job. And no one seems to really, truly want to like listen to what they're saying, like we think we know what customers want. But if we stop, it's that this is what we want to design. And we're going to pretend that that's what you want. But we don't necessarily sit and think about from their point of view, their perspective, the hidden things that they really need.
Aaron Moncur:How what are some tools that you've used to really dig deep into the voice of the customer and understand what it is they truly need?
Jesseca Lyons:The biggest skill is just to listen. And that that is not listening with? How am I going to respond? Listening with, you know, what, what should I say next, when they say something, it's, it's listening to not only what they're saying, but how they're saying it. And more importantly, what they're not saying. So if you've got somebody who's talking all about this one specific thing, there may be parts of it that are so frustrating to them that they're just kind of stuck in this box of like, we have to do it this way, because this is the way we've always done it. But what we're really looking at is, what are they trying to do? Why are they trying to do this? And is there maybe a slightly different way to approach it? Or a slightly different way that they haven't thought about? And what is it downstream? That's going to result from what they've done? Like, is there a way to even bypass steps in order to get them to what they're really trying to achieve downstream?
Aaron Moncur:Has one of your responsibilities been then to when you're listening to the customer give you these requirements? Maybe it's a scope of work, as one of your responsibilities been to kind of back up and say, Okay, I understand what you're telling me, Mr. Mrs. Customer. Now, let's let's dig a little bit deeper. And can we explore why you you think, well, you feel it should be done this way? And what have been the results of having those more in depth conversations.
Jesseca Lyons:So that's, that's really the heart of getting at the user needs is to really understand the why. So one of the projects that I worked on when I was at CRI, it was we were talking about the color of the handle. Like really shouldn't matter at all what the color of this handle is. And we were going in and we were talking about it and we were, we were trying to understand, okay, so the the customer that I'm working with is the company that's designing this device, and they wanted it blue. And they were like, Okay, we're gonna do it blue, we're gonna do it blue. Blue is a great color. People like it, it feels good. But I mean, there's a lot of shades of blue. Like if you've ever sat and looked at a Pantone book, like there's a lot of shades of blue. And we were going through all of this. And we had a couple of samples made up plastic injection molding, we got through the blue, and they're like, man, it's good. Like, like, move on. Like, No, you were so set on this blue. Like, why did you need it to be blue? Well, people think that it's more expensive looking like it looks, it looks better it it changes your perception of it, if it's this shade of like if it's blue. And it's like, okay, well, the shade that you've given me looks like a child's toy. So if you're saying that the perception of blue is because you want people to think that it's a better device, that it's a higher quality, that it's more expensive, that it just feels like something that you you need to have, then why don't we make it just a little darker? Like, why don't we try this other shade of blue? It's still warm, it's still friendly. It's not intimidating, but we can make it feel different. And so they ran another lot with a different shade of blue. And immediately the guy saw the final product and he's like, Yeah, you're right. There's no question. We Yeah, we have to make this change. And it's about the why they wanted the blue. And what they were getting at that they they didn't even really know that they were setting that as their new Need the need to set the perception of the device in the surgeon's mind?
Aaron Moncur:That's a perfect illustration. So they told you they wanted it blue. Had you not gone deeper, you may have just made a blue and it may have looked like Toys R Us thing. But you caught you know, what's the why behind that and understood that this is we want to make it look, you know, more expensive or more premium product. I have a coach who, who always says intent counts more than content. And that's something that I try to remember a lot sounds like, you know, perfect application of that principle to the content being blue. But the intent being we want it to look like a premium product.
Jesseca Lyons:And I think it's important that people understand that user needs aren't just from, you know, that surgeon, the patient, the end user, like if you're making a car, you know, the person driving it. It's also about what you as a company, from your marketing, your sales, your support, whatever it is that you need, as well.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah. Well, let's go towards the beginning of your career at Black and Veatch, and talk a little bit about that. It looks I'm not familiar with the company, which doesn't mean much of anything. I'm not familiar with most companies out there. But it looks like they're involved with a lot of like City Planning and Infrastructure projects. And that feels almost like more of the civil engineer domain. So I'm curious, how did you how did you come to work there.
Jesseca Lyons:So when I first got my degree in mechanical engineering, I thought that what I wanted to do was automation and robotics. And I thought, you know, that that was going to be the most exciting thing that I could ever do. And so what the company was working on at the time, was automation. And, you know, going through and helping in terms of, you know, different, like you said, facilities, so, you know, water treatment plans for wastewater treatment plants, a lot of different City Planning and Infrastructure, things like that. So I thought, hey, you know, I really like automation, this will be great. And then I realized that it wasn't necessarily automation. That was exciting and fascinating, like robotics wasn't necessarily exciting and fascinating, and that there was a different level to it. It was also about, you know, the product that I was working on. And I wasn't as excited about City Planning and Infrastructure, you know, as a mechanical engineer, as what, you know, some of the civil engineers may be. And that's actually where I ended up then at Beckman. Coulter is in the life science industry was really exciting, because I realized that I could help people in a different way. So you know, there's always this trend of being able to help people, whether it was you know, the automation and the infrastructure. Getting into Beckman really gave me the opportunity to see that the industry makes a bigger impact to me personally, than what I originally thought. So I got into, you know, automation, the laboratory automation, automating the, the chemistry pipetting process, and I thought, okay, you know, this is really great, I get the love of automation, that way, moving robotics, I get the life science and all the industry is better. And so I thought, hey, this is exciting, this is where I really want. And it was through working there that I realized that the customer and being directly involved in helping and impacting them, was actually the the facet that I needed more of. And that actually led me to jump back into a different industry getting in working at Bastion for you know, hey, now I could work directly with customers, helping them solve their needs. And that's when I realized that I can't leave the life science medical device industry, like, I really, truly am so energized by being in that field, that even though I got to work with customers all day, every day, the customers that I loved the most were all of the ones that were working in the med device industry. And I missed that day to day aspect of it.
Aaron Moncur:I think that you're very, I won't use the word lucky but fortunate to have identified the fact that you are passionate about this thing called you know, customer interaction, customer call whatever you want, but customer focused. What were there any what's the word I'm looking for? I don't know, insights, or epiphanies? Or how did you come to learn this about yourself? And maybe how do you think that other engineers can, can can use maybe a similar process or strategy to figure out like, what is it about engineering that that really motivates me?
Jesseca Lyons:I think that's the most important thing is to figure out what it is that really motivates and excites you and for me, I reached a point where I just sat down and of course engineering Pen and paper, right? We're gonna make a list. And I was like, Okay, well, what do I, what do I really hate? about going to work each day? What is it that I absolutely can't stand? Because it's a lot easier to start with the things that you hate, and be like, okay, you know, I don't want to do, I can't sit in front of a computer all day and do CAD, while its engineers love it. But like, for me, the isolation just couldn't do it. So, okay, I've got that on my list, you know, what do I not want to do? And I went through all of these things that if I had to spend the rest of my life doing them, I can do them. But I don't really want to do them. Like it's not adding any value. And then I sat down, and I thought about what are all the things that I love to do, and we're not talking like, I love calculus, and like, we're not talking like I love and whatever it is, in terms of like what you went through with engineering classes, I'm talking about the nebulous, soft, I love solving a problem. I love identifying a root cause I love finding a process in chaos. I love working with people, I love helping them out. And I love trying to take this disorganized disorderly mess and put it into a nice organized system. I like managing products and projects and coordinating things. And I see connections that aren't always readily present. So if you tell me about five different processes, I can find how they all trace, and we even connect back into each other. And where are the outputs from one or the inputs from another and I realized that all of those things, were what I should look for in terms of a job description. So when I put together what my job description is, okay, I'm looking at processes, I'm looking at procedures, I'm looking at organizing, I'm looking at, you know, working with teams, and cross functions, and all of these different things. And it just so happened that what I want to do, falls really neatly in the med device industry in terms of, you know, either quality management systems and understanding how what somebody gives you from your product development standpoint, allows you to do what you need to do for design controls. And here's my nice, orderly, organized system and how to buy outputs feed into manufacturing and operations and supply chain. And how do we all play together in this world?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I love the the idea of the love hate list. That's something I've used in the past as well. And it helps clarify things so well to just, you know, spend two weeks writing down all the things that you do every day, and then next to each one of them. I love doing this, I don't love doing that. And at the end of two weeks, you have a pretty clear list of things that you know, should help guide your, maybe your future endeavors.
Jesseca Lyons:Top 10 list is another. So like every quarter, what are the top 10 things that you did that quarter? And you'll start to see over time. Okay, so one, how easy was it for me to come up with 10 things that I did, like, if you are struggling to do like 10 things that you really enjoyed that quarter? Like we gotta find a better way to live life. If we hate each quarter of our life. We can't come up with 10 things. That's a lot of time. Yeah. Right? And then to what is it about those things that you like, is it that, you know, you got to be outside, you know, enjoying the nice weather over the summer, because you got a flexible work schedule, it was you got to, you know, get a 510 K clearance, and you know what, whatever you happen to find the most exciting those top 10 things, personal professional doesn't matter. You should start to try to see, can I have more opportunities to get those 10 things again, to experience and enjoy and be able to incorporate those things into my life more.
Aaron Moncur:And I think that ties into this idea that I feel like is truer now than it was maybe even, you know, 30 years ago that we all have, to some extent the ability to kind of dictate our own realities. Work is so fluid these days and so much more forgiving of different situations and different skill sets that I think that we all have a lot of opportunity to develop or create the realities that that we're really going to thrive in and that starts with personal responsibility of understanding what what is it what is it that I really love doing? Yeah, okay, I'm gonna jump around a little bit here. Apparently you speak German. Is that accurate? Okay,
Jesseca Lyons:I do. That's actually so I learned German middle school, high school, took some in college. And in 2015 We went over to Europe for a two week vacation in, you know, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, like, right around in that general area. And it I mean, I had to remember a lot of German from many years ago and I was able to get had enough of it back, that we actually got mistaken as locals a few times. Wow. No, it was great. So we had somebody who was standing in a coffee shop, trying to decide what pastry to order. And somebody was standing there going, Man, I hate tourists. This is terrible. They're always cutting out those tourists. American yes, they're so terrible, aren't they?
Aaron Moncur:That's a that's a huge compliment to your expertise in the German language. Wow, that must have been a great feeling. It was a lot of fun. It
Jesseca Lyons:was a great vacation. Yeah, in part because of being able to speak enough of the language to get by I am by no means an expert.
Aaron Moncur:Do you think that I don't know if you'd call yourself bilingual? But at least knowing a second language? Do you think it's it's caused you to think differently about language in general? And about communication? And has this tied into your your, your kind of love of documentation, which effectively is communication?
Jesseca Lyons:Well, it's funny, because I feel like a lot of people think documentation is a dirty word. And it's, for me, it's about being able to communicate and express what my ideas are, whether it's through drawings, and making sure that I've got all of the details on the drawing set, right, or it's writing and telling that story. crafting the needs. And I think, a second language helped me be aware of the precise nature of the words you use and the impact they have. There's a different connotation that you're definitely not aware of when you you know, first start learning a second language, and I think it applies across the board is that you have to understand that the word you use isn't just a word that, you know, is like a black and white definition in the dictionary. There's a connotation and emotion and a feeling that goes along with it as well. And so in order to be able to effectively communicate, you can't just think about the words you're using, from a definition standpoint, you've got to think about the way that you're using them in terms of the tone, the speed and flexion, like how you're actually making these words come across as well. And you can set an emotion in somebody and for something based solely off of the words you use and how you say them, how you write them.
Aaron Moncur:I feel like you could read a book on this topic. Well, it's so funny, because
Jesseca Lyons:it's, it's all about the engineering and the precision. Like you can't get exactly my meaning and my point, and it's not exactly what I want, if I don't tell it to you in the right way. And so like it's every time the engineers tell me, Oh, it doesn't matter about spelling and grammar. I'm an engineer. Why do I care about this? Like, I realized that most people don't see it that way. But for me, it's so critical, because that's how I give you the precise thing that I want. So word choice. And all of this comes back to my type A, I'm an engineer, like it's got to be set out exactly how it needs to be. And it's all about the words you use.
Aaron Moncur:Well, no wonder you chose to learn German. I mean, with all the precision, it's
Jesseca Lyons:so great. It's so good. There's like five different words for one thing, and it's to get the different levels of precision. Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:That's fantastic. All right. Well, let's see. We take a quick break, so I can give a shameless plug for my company here. The being an engineer podcast is powered by pipeline design and engineering, where we work with predominantly medical device engineering teams who need turnkey custom test fixtures or automated equipment to assemble, inspect, characterize or perform verification or validation testing on their devices. And you can find us at test fixture design.com. Alright, you have mentioned your time at Beckman Coulter a bit where they develop diagnostic systems for healthcare lab testings, testing, and you are a systems engineer. They're in their integrated solutions group looks like Beckman Coulter relies heavily on automation for their diagnostic equipment. What was your role in that environment? And how did you see automation being used to kind of increase the efficacy of the diagnostic systems?
Jesseca Lyons:So I had probably one of the coolest roles that you can have at a company. So integrated solutions does custom one off solutions for any of their customers based around Beckmans laboratory automation. So the Biomek liquid handling systems is what a majority of these at the time that I worked there were based off of so there were a handful of liquid handlers, three liquid handlers with a couple of different minor configurations that that you could get. And basically, as you're going through this, you know in chemistry, we need to be able to pipette the liquid and the chemicals we need to be able to heat it up. We need to shake it to mix it or somewhere, you know, read it and phosphorescence, whatever we need to do for the entire chemistry process. And it's time consuming. And you know, if you're doing it one at a time, like it can take you a while to go through and do this. And so Backman has designed the ability to kind of automate that you can do in like a 96. Well, plate, you can do all of them at the same time. So you can do all 96. Wells, they've got different heads for pipetting. So you can you can do a lot with these systems, and integrated solutions. If you come to me and you said, yeah, hey, I really like this liquid handler. But I also want these five other devices with it. Okay, well, these are five other companies besides Beckman, who are, you know, that you're trying to integrate this all with? And so there's a group that literally just makes magic happen? And whatever you need it to do? Okay, well, we'll make it do that, we'll pass the, you know, trays back and forth, move the plates around, you know, get them where you need them to be, to all of these different devices, tell the device when to start running, or when to stop running, and everything. And I was from the system standpoint, there's the hardware engineers, there's a software engineers, and then the systems engineers, take both of those things, figure out how it all works together, and create the guides that will tell the end user, you know, how do you use this in your daily flow? How do you install it to those field installers, you know, all of the different things that you need for it, we test it to make sure that it's exactly what the user is looking for that it meets their needs, that you know, everything is set, right, we'll do design reviews with a hardware engineers and a software engineer. So like, you get to see a little of everything, and make all of those, you know, dots connect, and how your output and somebody else's input, how it all kind of fits together?
Aaron Moncur:How satisfying. How do you envision these, these automated systems being used in the current environment to to combat, you know, the whole COVID pandemic that's going around?
Jesseca Lyons:So it's been years, obviously, since I've been involved with that, but from my experiences with, you know, designing and developing these things, and working with them, basically, it's going to give you the ability to help with diagnosing, you know, does somebody have COVID? Do? Do we need to, you know, have speed up these treatment processes? Well, I mean, if I can test a whole bunch of people and get a better throughput on this, then, you know, obviously, I'm able to find out faster that somebody has it, do the contract, tracing, contact, tracing, and be able to, you know, more readily get our arms around what's going on. And then, you know, for testing all of these different vaccinations and everything else that you might have, like, you can run different tests faster, try a bunch of different parameters. And it makes it so that you can start thinking about other things. So you know, your brain isn't on the pipette this amount and put that here and pipette that amount and put that here No, like you let somebody else do that you figured out the process. And let's let automation do the grunt work, so to speak, so that we have a higher throughput, they're more accurate, and you can focus on things that need your brainpower to solve.
Aaron Moncur:That's a great insight how automation allows you to free up your time to think about other things while the automation takes care of the grunt work. Yeah, I like that. You've been heavily involved with verification and validation testing, which is something that's near and dear to my heart, since we serve that market. Most of what pipeline develops are custom one off machines, which make them relatively expensive. And I'm curious, what kinds of test equipment or tools did you wish that you had during your DMV testing that that didn't exist as an off the shelf item?
Jesseca Lyons:I mean, you name it, right? Like, this is why you guys are there, there's I mean, there's, if you can dream it up, like for a device, like there's going to be 50 million ways that you could test it and, you know, you're going to want to fixture in a certain way to be able to, like pull a mesh in just the right direction to test how flexible it's going to be before it gets implanted. I mean, like, there's a lot of different things that you're going to want to be able to try and do. I mean, we've got the basics, like everybody does, like a strength test. Okay, so, but how do you do that? You know, do you hook it up and, you know, just an instrument and you just pull it until it breaks? Do you you know, need to have different insights in terms of how you grip it and hold it because you might cause failure based off of how you're fixturing it not because the product itself is weak. It's because you held it in a spot or in a way that guarantees failure because you caused an introduce different stresses and strains than what you thought Have you clamped it too tightly and now all of a sudden it cracks, as opposed to breaking somewhere else. I mean, there's, there's 1,000,001 things that you want when you're an engineer to test it, how you think you should test it. I mean, that's, that's part of actually how I think about design controls, is that before I'm like, as I'm figuring out verification validation, if I can't find a way to test it, like, there's nothing out there for me to do, whether it's on the shelf off the shelf, if it's going to be too challenging, then I got to find a different requirement, because I can't actually get what I'm looking for in terms of a test result.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I need to hire you to be a spokesperson for pipeline. Oh, that was beautiful. Alright, user guides, you have put together a few I understand what skill set or design approaches is required to put together a user's guide versus designing a physical device?
Jesseca Lyons:I think that, honestly, I approach them in the same way. Okay. So no matter what the product is, it's all about how I'm communicating my intent. So like a physical device? If you look at it, do you know exactly how to use it without me telling you, man depends on what it is. So now, I got to figure out a way in order to tell you through all of these user guides, how to use these devices that I've come up with, I mean, if I can't tell you how to use it, or and you don't automatically know how to use it, then what good is it? So you know, I'm trying to make it as simple as possible. Whether it's a user guide, or a physical device, it should always be as simple as I can make it. I want it to be I guess, non interpretable? Like, I don't want you to have a problem with that there's maybe an alternate method to how I tell you to do something. Eliminating ambiguity. Yeah, yeah. So you know, I'm trying to make it as precise and as clear, but people think about things in a lot of different ways. And you got to think of a lot of different things of how would somebody use it wrong? How would somebody misinterpret what you're saying? And how can you try to help them? So pictures are obviously worth 1000 words, the more pictures that you can get, the better because it doesn't matter what language anyone speaks? There is no, there's nothing more clear than a picture. If you can get the right one.
Aaron Moncur:It's almost a puzzle. Yeah, solve, right? I love putting together systems and processes. That's something I feel like I'm good at. That's one of the things I've identified as something I just love doing. And I get such a kick out of seeing someone use a process that I put together in the way I intended that process to be carried out, you know, it's like, yeah, balloons go up and confetti, and it is just such a great feeling. So I imagine who get a similar feeling to seeing a user use the device after reading your user guide and in the way that you intended it.
Jesseca Lyons:That's funny, because as long as they're successful with it, then like, that's the whole point of us doing these, like your processes, like you don't put a process together. Unless you're trying to help somebody succeed at something right. Like, that's the whole point in putting it together. And so if they can't follow your process, then obviously you weren't successful at helping them succeed.
Aaron Moncur:Right? Yeah. As a consultant at Bastion, you apparently we're part of several speaking engagements. How How does an engineer enter into that speaking arena, you know, and how do you think your experience in training as an engineer helped or maybe even hindered your ability to be a speaker?
Jesseca Lyons:So this may or may not be a bad thing to admit, but I get terrible stage fright still to like, I hate speaking I love them. But I hate speaking engagements at the same time. Because it's so nerve wracking and terrifying to stand up there and speak to all of these different people. So you know, at Vashon here at Greenlight, like I I do speaking engagements regularly and every single one, I get the butterflies in my stomach like this is so nerve racking. I'm terrified to get up there and talk to these people.
Aaron Moncur:What do you keep doing it?
Jesseca Lyons:Because the message that I have is something that's exciting to get across. And so the whole point in doing it is because there's some topic, some idea that is either really challenging or confusing that shouldn't be or that people really struggle with that. I want to I want to add a different point of view to that maybe it's a little bit easier to understand. And we joke at Greenlight that I can hop on a soapbox and talk for 48 hours non stop about design controls like I would John talks about how much I love these things. I'm very, very passionate about them. And it's just, it's one of those things that there's so many different things that I just I want to help people demystify it and make it easier and getting to speak on these things does that it, it takes away the confusion. And that's, that's why I love even though I'm terrified of it, getting an opportunity to speak at different events like that, because if I'm feeling that excited about a topic, I know that I can spark that excitement in somebody else. And if I can spark that excitement in somebody else, now they're thinking about engineering in a whole different way. And I look what we've done, we've we've now touched one life that touches another life that touches another life, and all of us are now thinking about engineering in a different way. And we have a global impact again.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I love your passion, your Jessica, it's so clear, it comes across in your your tone of voice and in your facial expressions, I can see your face no one else can. But I love the passion that I hear. It's it's very enriching to speak with someone that has that kind of passion. Let's see you you worked as a product development engineer at CRI, which is a contract manufacturer. And that, to me seems like it would be a hugely rewarding experience that not a lot of engineers get the chance to to have specifically working at a contract manufacturer, right? Because you're not just at a design house doing the engineering, but you're actually part of the manufacturing the production as well. How did that role changed the way that you think about design for manufacturability? And what are a few of the takeaways that maybe you can share that would be helpful for the rest of us to keep in mind as we develop products that of course, ultimately need to be manufactured?
Jesseca Lyons:I know, like every engineering school talks about how design for manufacturability is so important. If you can't make it then what's the point in designing it? Right? Like, you'll never go anywhere, it's great to have a prototype, but Okay, now what, and I loved getting a chance to work at a contract manufacturer because of, you know, getting to see so many different projects and products that people were doing. And one of the coolest things about it is that you get to really, truly see how the design impacts how people are able to make it. And so you know, it's not just a Okay, yeah, this is this is pretty, this is going to be good for the end user that love it. That's one thing, like they can use it great. But what about making it and I was working on one product, and it was like the hardest thing in the entire world to assemble. Like, we could not get this thing to assemble easily at all. It's
Aaron Moncur:just fully you had a great fixture for doing that.
Jesseca Lyons:Yeah. So I mean, it's, it's tubing, it's Luers like this, what are we doing here, right, like we're putting a tube, a lure in a tube, we should be able to find a way to do this. So you know, we had tubing expanders, and that wasn't expanding at enough. And we would heat the tubing with a heated tubing expander, we were having challenges there. And then, you know, alcohol to try to help lubricate to put the luer in. And, you know, we're going through all of these different things. And finally, we ended up actually baking them for a little bit in an oven in order to get it soft enough in order to put it together. And it was just like, This is terrible. Like it was so hard. And, you know, you end up with bruises, from trying to put these things together. And every single device had to have this little tubing kit. And every tubing kit had like 25 to 35 different connections that were being made. And it took so much longer it was then you know what it should? And from an engineering perspective, okay, when I designed it well, one, did I have to use that specific tubing? Like, could I have used a slightly different one that was maybe a little bit easier to put together? Like why okay, I'm looking at leak rates. So is there a different way that I could achieve that leak rate from having a softer tube from having a slightly larger to from, you know, maybe it's a thinner wall, whatever it happens to be, is there a better way to actually assemble it, but it took three times longer to make these little tubing things than what it did to make the entire rest of the device. Oh, my goodness. And this was supposed to be the disposable thing. Like you're supposed to be able to toss it out, swap it in, put another one in and keep going like it was so hard, like the cost of goods then starts to escalate because it's so difficult to make. It's so labor intensive, that now it's more expensive than what it should be for the product.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, What do you have maybe like, top two or three things that an engineer should keep in mind is he or she is designing a project that is going to facilitate the ease with which it's manufactured.
Jesseca Lyons:So first, always remember that nobody else has the same, you know, strength, physical capabilities, know how whatever you have for that device, you've, you've lived with what you're designing for so much longer than what anybody else will from that manufacturing side. So never assume that they're going to just easily be able to figure out what you intended, like, make it so that like you can't put a fixture on the wrong way. You know, make it so that you can't get something upside down, like make it as easy as possible to put these things together. Because no one else knows exactly what these look like outside of you and your team. Yeah, yeah. And then to just remember that you may make like five or 10 for prototyping, but somebody else is making like hundreds of millions of these things. So either think about an easy way to automate it, or think about a way to simplify it. So screws, can you use fewer screws?
Aaron Moncur:It sounds like so you have some experience with this that has contributed to that, that edge in your voice right now.
Jesseca Lyons:It's not just me, it's other people that I work with, you know, it's one of those things where you, you get so annoyed and frustrated because it's so easy to use the wrong thing. It's so easy when you're out there with manufacturing, you know, so, okay, the device I was talking about with the tubing, we had one piece of tubing that was a slightly different size. But unless you really held them up next to each other, you couldn't tell it was like, hardly any difference at all. So it's like really like we couldn't have gone with a streamline piece throughout everything. So that we know exactly what we were doing. We didn't have to stop and think about it, there was like different lengths that really could have been the same length. And so there wasn't a value or purpose or an intent behind it. It just Well, when we did the drawing and you know, CAD, we just wanted to make it just a little longer.
Aaron Moncur:That was the btn design. Yeah, well, this is something
Jesseca Lyons:where a lot of people just don't stop and think about when I'm making this. Okay, now I have to cut 15 Different tubing lengths instead of five. You know, what, what am I gonna have to do on the back end? How can I make this easier?
Aaron Moncur:Let's go back to screws real quick. Use less screws
Unknown:are used the same ones? You know? Okay, that's great,
Aaron Moncur:right? Use the same one. Yeah. How do you feel about glue, I've always felt that glue is really fickle and have steered away from it. But working at a cm, you could probably use glue here and there. What are your thoughts about using adhesives.
Jesseca Lyons:So there are some where it's done in such a way that it's, it's relatively easy. So there's a lot of great things out there in terms of glue where you can like press a foot pedal, and automatically dispense the exact amount you need. And so you get your, you know, fixture to be able to you know, come in and tie this together. And so now I can press the foot pedal, I can rotate something, I can immediately glue and I can have the glue and whatever adhesive that I'm using, you know, it's going to go and it's going to create a good bond, it's going to be seamless, it's going to go through everywhere it needs to it's going to always just spend the right amount every single time but it's about the process that we put together, not necessarily the material. And so you know, if I can't do that, if I have no idea how much glue I need, if I have no idea how long it's going to take for it to cure, you know, do I need to? Is it a UV cure? Or what do I need to do? How much time secondary? I mean, there's a million different things to think through with it. And can I always get it repeatable? But glue is not bad? Like we don't hate the glue? You know, hate the fixture that wasn't there, you know, hate that. Nobody told you exactly how much to dispense? Or didn't make it easy to repeat your hate the process? Not necessarily the tool.
Aaron Moncur:Very good point. Very well said. What are we just got one or two more questions. And then we're gonna wrap up here, but tell me what are one or two of the biggest challenges that you face. As an engineer.
Jesseca Lyons:I think the biggest thing, it all goes back to communication, like you've got to get people to understand your point of view. And to get people to understand your point of view, you got to understand there's so like, it's not just, you know, I'm trying to force my design or my ideas, you know, at you, you have to, you know, come up with this. Like, it has to be a true team approach. And I think everybody has met an engineer who's married to their idea. Like this is this is my idea. This is my baby. It's the best thing ever. Like don't tell me that I need to change it. And if you're trying to get them to make a tweak or an adjustment because you know at the end of the day like this isn't this isn't easy to manufacture. This isn't easy to make, you're not going to be able to test it, you're not going to be able to fix it, whatever it is, for whatever reason And that's one of the biggest challenges is get getting somebody to hear your point of view. And you got to understand why they're why they're coming from theirs. You know, why are they married to that idea? Is it because they've been through 300 different iterations? And they know that the only way to actually do it is this, okay? Well, maybe then let's, let's figure out a way that we can keep that part of it and work around that nature of it. But don't just automatically assume that your ideas, the best that you've, you've got to get them to accept yours. It's not a win lose situation.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I've found that in terms of communicating with someone and understanding their opinion, especially when it might be slightly in opposition to your own, it can be so helpful to just shut up and listen to them, and and really try to understand where they're coming from before trying to explain what you're trying to explain. And once once the other party realizes that, oh, he's he's really trying to understand my point of view. He's not just trying to push his on me. He's genuinely trying to understand where I'm coming from. At that point, I think the lines of communication just naturally open up much better. Yeah. Yeah. And
Jesseca Lyons:I mean, it's, it's, we're all trying to hit that same result, right. Like, we're trying to make this product. And whether it's your idea, somebody else's idea, let's all let's all come together, and let's figure out the way the best way to make it happen. The other challenge that I face is the phrase, this is the way we've always done it. I hate that phrase more than anything like Okay, so we've done that in the past. Are you telling me that everything as it is today is exactly as it was when that got created? Or my favorite is when no one knows why they do it that way? Like, we've just always done it this way? Well, why? I don't know. We've just always done it that way. Step backs and question. Yeah. Come on, just go with it. Right. I've actually had people who thought it was because the procedure was written that way. But they've never gone back and read the procedure. And it wasn't anywhere stated in there. Somebody had told them, This is how you do it. And so then they told the next person, this is how you do it, and it propagated. And no one had ever figured out why.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, speaking of phrases I dislike, yeah, but yeah, but has no place in effective communication. You know, yeah, I really love what you're doing here, but it invalidates everything, you know, prior to the but. And it's
Jesseca Lyons:funny, because people think that you can just swap that to. Yes. And and yes, it is great for brainstorming.
Aaron Moncur:It's a lot better than Yeah, but it's an improvement, in my opinion, if you
Jesseca Lyons:use it the right way. If you use it in the way that it's intended, then it's a brainstorming. We're gonna keep going, we're gonna build on it and make it better. But if you hijack it to be an alternative to Yeah, but yes, and my idea is clearly better. Why don't we go in this direction instead? It that is the same kind of thing.
Aaron Moncur:In 10, counts more than con Yes. Yep. Love it. All right. Well, Jessica, thank you so much for your time today. How can people get a hold of you or the company where you work.
Jesseca Lyons:So if you're interested in green light guru, you can go to the website, green light dot guru. If you are interested in reaching out to anybody at the team support at Green Light dot Guru is a great way to get in touch with anybody that does go to everybody on our customer success team, as well as several others. So you will get that email sent my direction. If you want specifically me, my LinkedIn, or Greenlight email address. Keep in mind, Jessica is spelled differently. J E S, S, E, CA. So if you throw an AI in there, you'll never find me. Yeah, yeah. But if you throw an AI and you'll never find me, so that's kind of how I keep hidden under the radar sometimes.
Aaron Moncur:Nice. Great. All right. Well, thank you again, really appreciate all of the delightful conversation and and wisdom you shared with us. Anything else that you'd like to say before we end?
Jesseca Lyons:Just the engineering really, truly is so much fun. And I can't imagine anyone not loving being an engineer?
Aaron Moncur:I agree. 100% Yep. Same thing here. All right. Thank you very much, Jessica.
Jesseca Lyons:Thanks.
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 DS sign.com Thanks for listening