Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S1E31 Feedback From the Floor, Purdue, & Toothpaste Boxes | Kirsty Crofton
Kirsty Crofton shares her wonderfully effective experience at Purdue training to become an engineer (definitely look into this if you’re thinking about an education in engineering!). She also tells us about how to work with operators on the floor to identify and correct problems that might be harder for the engineering team to identify, and relates a terrific anecdote about toothpaste boxes and solving problems using the KISS principle.
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 Kirsty Crofton, who is a biomedical engineer with a master's degree in engineering management. Kirsty has worked in fields ranging from test engineer to quality engineer to new product development and R&D management and is currently employed at Edwards Lifesciences. Christy, welcome to the podcast.
Kirsty Crofton:Thanks so much for having me.
Aaron Moncur:You're very welcome. Alright, so let's dig in here. Why did you Kirsty, decide to become an engineer?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah. So I mean, I think it goes all the way back to high school. I just naturally had a love for STEM. I always love math. I always love science. And I think what I liked about it is that there is a way to solve the problem. And there's a way to think about it. And actually, in high school, I had the opportunity. In my AP chemistry class, a speaker came in and talked about, 'Hey, you know, we're trying to plug some high schoolers into summer internships into some local companies here in our town, which was in The Woodlands, Texas. And my ears perked up because of the hourly rate to be honest with you.
Aaron Moncur:Sure, nothing all bad.
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, they said this summer internship would be paying, I think it was like $12 an hour, which was in comparison to my $9 an hour lifeguarding and so I said, sign me up. And I got into an internship at a chemical company called Huntsmen. And I worked in their lab, testing, I worked with their tech, their technicians and labs doing tensile testing, compression, testing, humidity, temperature, everything, you name it. There was a really fun experience. And so from that point on, I thought, 'Okay, I want to be an engineer.' And I really like kind of a hands on, I love problem solving. And so that led me to go to Purdue University which is in Indiana, so I head out to the Midwest and absolutely loved it. And one of the reasons why I went to Purdue University is because you don't actually declare what type of engineer you are your first year. So the first year engineering all engineers are together because you take the basics, Calculus, Chemistry, Physics, etc. And throughout the year, they introduce you to every single type of engineering major that they have. And I kept going back to biomedical. I was fascinated every speaker that came in to talk to us I was, I never missed a class I wanted to hear more, I read articles about what we were doing and the medical device industry and so yeah, for my sophomore year, I declared to be a biomedical engineer. And then from there on, I took internships in various different fields. And I've never looked back since I love biomedical engineering, I love medicine. I love the idea of helping patients. So it's been a great experience.
Aaron Moncur:That's really cool that at Purdue, you don't declare a specific field within engineering right off the bat.
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah
Aaron Moncur:You get exposed to all these different fields. That's a great way of doing it I that my experience was was different. I had to figure out, I think I started withmanufacturing engineering, and then I changed it soon to mechanical engineering. But tell me what, what else about Purdue, because Purdue I mean, that's a big name, right? I'm sure every now and then right. In your own head. You're like, 'Yeah, I'm kind of a big deal.' My own horn here, but yeah, now what else, what else Purdue was maybe different or unique from other other universities, you think?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah. So I mean, the main reason why I went there is because I knew I wanted to be an intern, but I didn't know what kind. And they have every, every type of engineer you possibly think of actually, a little side note, they even have something called 'imaginary engineering' there, which is something that if there's not a specific title of a degree that you are interested in, I had a buddy who went into, he did something like acoustic engineering, and he made up this this basically degree because he was interested of how to optimize sound in theatres. And so I was fascinated by this, this culture of engineering, but having that diversity on campus, not being so just defined and the way that the biomedical program was set up is we actually took semesters or even years in different focuses. So I did basically a year of pre-med, I did a semester of electrical engineering, I did about a year of mechanical engineering, and I really got this mix, which was really great. And I think they did a fantastic job just dipping your feet in so many different areas. And then the recruiting process was really great, too. So they're, they're known for their engineering. So a lot of companies come to the university and, and that's how I got exposed to some companies like Abbott and Zimmer. That's how I got my internships and then that fell into me going out to California to work for Edwards Lifesciences. So, I mean, obviously, a little bias, but I'm a huge, I'm a huge fan of a big 10, I'm a big fan of Purdue and I even have recruited a few fellow boiler makers to come out to California to work for Edwards. So I'm pretty happy about that, yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Nice, nice. That's fantastic. I love the process there. Getting to almost create your own degree, imaginary engineering, is that what you call it?
Kirsty Crofton:Yes. I wouldn't say very common, but it is a thing.
Aaron Moncur:But it's, it's accepted at least. I'm surprised because it sounds, for lack of a better term here, it sounds a little bit like hippy, new age, free world, and I wouldn't have thought of Purdue that way. They're very established traditional organization. So how cool to hear that they have a very free open process like that. I love it.
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Did you have some counselor that guided you and helped you decide this, this might be a good grouping of classes to take? Or was it all up to you to figure out which which classes?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, so you know that we take, we all take what's called 'first year engineering,' and part of that class is getting you exposed, and they bring in speakers from different industries, you might do class projects that are geared towards certain types of focuses. For example, I took a one credit class in nuclear engineering, just for the hell of it to say what is new, I had no idea what nuclear engineering was.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah.
Kirsty Crofton:And throughout that, I had thought about biomedical prior to leaving going to Purdue. And I really liked the program there. And actually, they don't have this any more. But to get into the biomedical school, you actually have to take an exam to get in to your sophomore year. And part of the exam, it's not like a exam on any of your subjects. It's actually like a personality test. And part of the exam was actually they brought in, they bring in an object, and you have a certain amount of time to come up with as many medical devices or medical applications as you could possibly think of with this object.
Aaron Moncur:Oh wow, I love it.
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah. For my year, when I got tested, they brought in a Starbucks lid, like one of those plastic lids.
Aaron Moncur:Uh huh.
Kirsty Crofton:And you have five minutes or something like that to come up with as many medical devices as you can think of.
Aaron Moncur:Do you remember anything that you came up with? I'm really happy
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, yeah, eye patch. I don't know you can use the little, the little cutout to disperse things. I don't know.
Aaron Moncur:There you go. Kind of dental floss?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, there's many
Aaron Moncur:Will be on a medical card?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah. And so yeah, from that, then on, we had a decently small class of BMEs, I think there was about 66, maybe 70 of us and in the program, and that year, and you get to be really close with those people. And I am still in contact with them today. And it's really cool to see where they've turned out and in the markets, and some of them went to med school. So really cool.
Aaron Moncur:While becoming more and more a fan of Purdue here. This is, this is great. If there are people out there who are maybe thinking about going into engineering, they're not yet in university. I mean, Purdue, to me, it sounded like a really great option. What are, are there any things that people can do you think to increase their chances of getting in? Because that's a pretty competitive university.
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah. I think the obvious thing would be, do well in school, get the good grades, do extracurricular activities, sports or organizations in your community, that kind of thing. And I mean, I had spoke about I happen to stumble across an internship as as a high schooler, and I think that's pretty uncommon. But at the same time, I think there's ways to get involved in companies or in your community that go a little bit above and beyond other students. Set yourself apart. And I think, make sure that you're, you're looking at all your different options. It is kind of a scary thought that you're 18-19 years old, and you're moving away from home for the first time, and you're making a decision of what, what's my 35-40 years is going to look like in my career.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, right.
Kirsty Crofton:Big deal, right? And, and so you want to explore all your options, but, but also be okay to make a change. I personally didn't do it. But I have many, many friends who went into a degree and thought, 'You know what, I need to make a change. This isn't right.' And that's okay. So
Aaron Moncur:Totally okay. Well, like you said, right. I mean, you're 18-19 years old, you're still really young, when you're trying to make this huge life decision. Like
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah
Aaron Moncur:I'm setting the trajectory for the rest of my life. What do I want it to be? No pressure, right? But if
Kirsty Crofton:I know, I know.
Aaron Moncur:And I love what you said about setting yourself apart, right? Doing something that's maybe a little bit unique or different. In your case, you found this internship, that's huge. I mean, in my experience, I got a great foundational education in college, but I didn't really know how to do stuff for an engineering company, until I had an internship. That's where I really learned, the nuts and bolts of engineering is actually doing the work. So the fact that you were able to do it that young, in high school, that's, that's fantastic.
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah
Aaron Moncur:So that was Huntsmen, is that right?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, Huntsmen. Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:This is gonna probably stretch your your memory a little bit, because I know it was a while ago, but one of the things I read on your LinkedIn page was you did some testing for TempurPedic. On the mattress
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, mattresses.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah. And, and I'm a huge fan of memory foam mattresses, I've never been able to afford the TempurPedic because at least back in the day, they were super expensive. I remember, they're like, five, six thousand dollars for this mattress. And I always wondered, what is so special about their foam that that warrants a $5,000 price tag, they're not that expensive anymore. But back in the day, they were. Do you remember any like really special or unique properties about their memory foam that that like other mattresses just didn't have?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, no, I remember we would do temperature control. So you would put samples into some sort of oven or do some sort of humidity test. And then you would do compression testing afterwards
Aaron Moncur:Okay
Kirsty Crofton:So you're trying to weather it. And I'm assuming, if you're putting into some type of oven, you're trying to age it in a way, like how many years does this mattress actually hold its properties? I can't tell you I'm any sort of expert on on those mattresses as I did that testing when I was back when I was 18. But I'm assuming that it has to do with you know the quality that it can maintain this this memory after so many uses, right? You're using
Rafael Testai:Yeah
Kirsty Crofton:That bed every, every night, you're in that same position, you're putting compression down and that same part of the mattress? How is it going to still come back to life after all that time?
Aaron Moncur:Right, right. Yeah, we we want it to be a memory in it's under slept on state but not in the slept on state right? After a lot of material.
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:All right. Let's see, you've talked about being in medicine and in biomedical engineering. And one of the things that you're passionate about is this paradigm shift in medicine. And I was hoping that you could talk a little bit about that. What is it that you find so compelling about this topic?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah. So that this is a little bit more personal. It's not so much from like an Edwards and Edwards is obviously looking into a lot of this. And right now I'm actually working in a department of Edwards Lifesciences called Advanced Technology. And the reason why I was so interested in going to this department versus some of the other ones and within Edwards is because of looking at what are potential things that we can come up with, in terms of really pushing the boundaries of medical device, medical therapies that are that are going to be the market shifts in the future? So if you think about, you know, going to the doctor when you were a child versus going to the doctor now, so some of the changes that are happening with patients is, is we're more inclined to do research on her on our own, right? If you feel sick, or you have some type of symptoms, what's one of the first things you do, you go on your phone
Aaron Moncur:Google, yeah.
Kirsty Crofton:You go on web, and in, you're googling it, and usually it says something like,'You have cancer.' And it starts to starts to freak you out. But all jokes aside, patients are becoming almost, quote, doctors on their own. And I say that very jokingly, because I think some patients think that they know what's going on when they don't, but, I think this idea that we have so much data at our fingertips, and patients are more in tune with their health, I think, especially this year, health is a big deal with COVID. And people are starting to, to understand that knowing your body is really important. And so how do we as a medical device company, coming up with therapies, knowing that shift and patience? How do we tune into that? Actually, right now I'm wearing an Apple watch, right? I know exactly how many steps I've, I've taken today, I know exactly how many calories I burned in my workout, how can I use that information, and apply that to my, my, my physician and and use that sort of information to tailor individualized therapies. And I think that's a fascination of mine, I think in the past, you, you go to a doctor, you go to a specialist, and you say, 'Here's all my symptoms,' and they might treat you like they would treat anybody. Right. But maybe that's not the right treatment for you as an individual. And I think the the power of data, and what to do with the data is going to be a very interesting shifts, and how we think about medicine.
Aaron Moncur:Is there anything that you can share that Edwards or not even Edwards, necessarily just kind of the healthcare, medical device industry in general, is starting to work on that, that we might see, 2, 3, 4, 5 years from now that that fits into that kind of cutting edge technology category?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, I mean, I can't talk too, specifically about any projects I work on, but I think, keep your eyes open for digital health. I think that's a big change, even looking at Apple looking at Google, what are they doing? Where are their patents going? And it's a change from a regulatory sense to look at the FDA. How are they trying to change how we approve devices and approved technology and apps? It's fascinating. It's fascinating work, because where do you draw the line in terms of therapy. So for example, if all of a sudden a patient is monitoring their own health, and it gives them alerts, let's say you have diabetes, or something like that, it gives them alerts. Does that mean that they need to make their own medical decision to increase decrease a certain medication? Or do we still need to make that loop back to the physician? Or do, do we just validate that treatment from a from a software standpoint?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah
Kirsty Crofton:it's it's a very complex conversation. And I'm just fascinated to see where it goes. Because I think there's a lot of benefits to have I think the digital world has moved way faster than medicine has caught up with yet. So
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah.
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Very cool. I'm going to move on to a different subject here. So you, you work in what I hope I can fairly describe as a predominantly male-oriented industry. What has your experience been like as a woman in engineering? Have you seen, but much male chauvinism or gender based? Just one way or another? How has that been for you?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, you know, so I would first start by saying biomedical engineering actually has a lot of woman. At Purdue, I'm pretty sure My classes about 60% woman
Aaron Moncur:Really?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, yeah.
Aaron Moncur:What do you think that is? What, why are all the female engineers flocking to biomed?
Kirsty Crofton:I think it has to do you know medicine nursing, you do have a lot of females moving in that direction. I think it's a sense of the science kind of STEM, but it's not like this. I want to be careful, highest serious, I don't even know if it's swinging, but it's not this, like scary big machinery, kind of dirt, my husband's a civil engineer, right, and he doesn't work with any females, it's a very, very male dominated. And I also think when when, you know, some women start to go in a certain field, other women follow, right, those those kind of mentors, or people that kind of say, 'Hey, you should try this out, you know, come over here.'
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Right.
Kirsty Crofton:So I think that's part of it. But yeah, I mean, you know, even with that being said, I would say it's still very male dominated in, in the industry, especially, so I used to work in manufacturing engineering. And that is, for sure, very male dominated, I mean, just to give an example, to go on a cleanroom, you're not allowed to wear makeup, you're not allowed to wear jewelry, no perfume, no skirts, or dresses, you can't even have your feet showing, so flats, you have to wear socks. Anyway, it's a very, I'm not, what you would think, as a woman going to a
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, right.
Kirsty Crofton:Into industry. And so, saying that, I think there's some struggles that you see. Women, and not all, I definitely want to put that out there, not all, but I definitely see some woman being a little bit quieter, or maybe a little bit more reserved. Or maybe if we have a big meeting, Edwards has these conference rooms where there's a big table in the middle, and then there's like an outside bench. Now a lot of women just will go to the bench, they don't go to the main table. And, and at Edwards, we have kind of created some network of woman groups, and we've encouraged women to make more of a presence, make your voice heard sit at the table, you were invited to the meeting, we want to hear what you have to say. And I think the higher that I go up the ranks, the less and less I see. Just to just to give you a crazy statistics, there are more CEOs in the world with a CEO named John, than there are women CEOs.
Aaron Moncur:You're kidding.
Kirsty Crofton:No.
Aaron Moncur:Wow. That's crazy statistic. Yeah.
Kirsty Crofton:More Johns as the CEO than woman. So it's, I don't think anyone you know, argues the fact that it's not a problem. It is a problem. It's almost in every single industry. And how do we address it? And how do we diversify those top leaders? And it's not just, it's not just male and female, it's, it's, we need diversity
Aaron Moncur:Yeah
Kirsty Crofton:We need people to not be looking like you, if you're sitting on a table with a bunch yous around
Aaron Moncur:You're gonna come up with the same idea that you come up with, right?
Kirsty Crofton:Exactly
Aaron Moncur:We had a guest a month or two ago, Margaret Koga Ward on the show, and she was talking about the same issue. And, and I think that she's done quite a bit of research just into the anatomical or biological differences between men and women. And one thing she mentioned was, there's this connection, I don't remember what it was some bundle of nerves in your in your brain that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. And she said that, anatomically, it's larger in women than it is in men. And as a result of that, women tend to be better equipped to connect different thinking spheres of their brain than men. And as a result of that, they're able to come up with different ideas, not necessarily better or worse ideas, but different ideas than than their male counterparts might come up with. So I echo what you said for sure. Diversity is is just going to make product development and engineering and brainstorming and creativity that much better.
Kirsty Crofton:Exactly, exactly. Yeah. I mean, the more diversity you have, the better the innovation, for sure.
Aaron Moncur:Well, this is a good time to take a quick pause and remind the audience that the being an engineer Our podcast is powered by Pipeline Design & Engineering, where we work with 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 testfixturedesign.com. We're speaking with Kirsty Crofton, who currently works at Edwards Lifesciences as an R&D associate manager. We're going to go back just a little bit from before you were at Edwards, you mentioned manufacturing you had a role in manufacturing I think one of your roles when you're working at Abbott was to promote safety within the manufacturing groups and I wondered what what were some of the common safety issues that you found and and how did you resolve them and and another thought on this is it seems to me like, like changing those behaviors is really an exercise in adjusting human behavior. And I wondered was there was there an element to that and how did you incorporate that?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, so I went out to work for Abbott in my early years in college and I went out to work for a nutrition plant and so this is where Abbott makes Pedialyte, Pediasure and zone bars, those energy bars and so this was my first taste of massive types of manufacturing, I mean the automation the big lines, you have day shift and night shift it was fascinating. I still love it, I love sharing and as an intern, having my summer projects one of the things was to, yeah, evaluate safety and I think the most important thing as an engineer working in manufacturing is making sure that you spend the time to get to know the operators get to know the technicians get to know the people running the equipment running the lines on that particular lines a little bit harder for me to actually run a product at Edwards for example, as a manufacturing engineer, I would go and build my own product because how am I supposed to be an engineer and come up with better processes or change procedures or whatnot if I don't physically know how to do it myself? I would start there and and and some of the things in terms of safety of course you have your ergonomics and you have you know in in big production like that, you know the safety of the operators is very important you have big machinery going through you have people there's certain ways to walk that kind of thing and so you really have to make sure that you're living the life of an operator and why are they doing the practices that they're doing. There's there's some kind of stories of people getting hurt or maybe doing a motion continuously that hurts the wrist or something like that. And the only way you're going to fix it is if you watch it and observe it and talk to them and ask questions and what are their ideas to make it better. There there was this one story and I hope I don't butcher it but there is a tooth case manufacturer and you know those little travel toothpaste boxes?
Aaron Moncur:Sure, yeah.
Kirsty Crofton:You have a little tube of toothpaste in there? One of the manufacturers was having a big issue with accidentally shipping out empty boxes so when the, the customer opens the box there wasn't a toothpaste in the box. And so they, they hired a third part kind of consultant to come i and do this massive proces optimization and they came u this really fancy scales so th y would be weighing the product before it got out to the custome s to make sure that the the tub of toothpaste actually had the product in it.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah
Kirsty Crofton:I mean the box of toothpaste had the product in it. And after a few months the CEO was like, 'Hey did we fix anything?' And they said 'No, actually we haven't caught any.'
Aaron Moncur:Really?
Kirsty Crofton:And and they said well, there's no there's no customer complaints, there's been no empty boxes sent out and so the CEO goes down to the line and one of the operators just has a little fan sitting on his station that is spinning the air. And so as the assembly line goes down with the cardboard box with the tube of toothpaste in it, it just blows off if it's too light. A five dollar fan, but an operator just thought,'Well, nobody asked me how to fit.
Aaron Moncur:Consultant agency wasn't much more expensive than that.
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah. Right? So I tell that story and I love it just because it tells you sometimes us engineers, we tend to over complicate things, we go down, we want to fix all these problems. We have all these grand ideas when something so simple from somebody who does that operation everyday, has has the idea, start there.
Aaron Moncur:I couldn't agree more. I think that as engineers, there's almost this inherent, conflicting motivation where for our company, and for the product that we're developing we we of course, want to develop something that's as simple as possible, as easy as possible. But then, as engineers, we're kind of geared towards looking at a complexity and, and creating solutions for complex problems. And so there's almost this this itch that we want to scratch of like
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah
Aaron Moncur:Let's do something hard. Let's do this, like really complicated. Put some sensors in here and motion control and some automation, because that's awesome. And we love it. Or we could do a fan, right?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, right? No, I know. And I've seen that, I'v
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Kirsty Crofton:Oh, no, you know? And it's like, why, ahy seen engineers do that fro like, a product desig standpoint. Sometimes, they're, they're designing this fancy ha are we doing this? dle or fancy catheter that doe XYZ. And it's like, 'Well, h
Aaron Moncur:It doesn't matter. This is what we want to do. This ve you asked the custome s? Does that matter? Do they ca e about that?' is fun.
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Aaron Moncur:All right, um, let's see, I'm not sure where this was, but you did some studies on on Gauge R&Rs. And I wanted to dig into that a little bit. Because a lot of what we do, has to do with Gauge R&Rs, we do a lot of test fixtures and equipment and that kind of thing, kind of run us through the process of a Gauge R&R, and then maybe speak a little bit to during this study that you did. Did did you find any, like a common gauging equipment to be more or less reliable than other types of equipment?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, yeah. So Gauge R&R is, especially I did a stent and quality engineering, and in making sure that your test methods are valid for whatever you want to do. You got you got to start there, right? If you're trying to measure something, or or trying to use it as a, you know, a sense of this product is good, or this process is good, but you haven't really evaluated the test method, then then it's, it's not helpful at all right? So I think whenever you're looking at some sort of testing, doing a simple Gauge R&R, and you don't have to overcomplicate it, either just look at, you know, pull three operators, have them do the measurement three times three trials, etc. and doing it pretty quickly, get a sense, get a ballpark of how reproducible is this? If I'm measuring it, versus you're measuring it, and we're getting completely different, then then there's a problem, right? And, and again, I kind of go back to I've dealt with some test methods, again, that we have a grand idea of how to measure something, you do a Gauge R&R, and it's it's not as good as you think, ask the operator. Again. Get their input. Why is that? Why are you getting outliers? I've done it to where it's okay, we looked at a test method, and it's three operators, and one of them is way off. But the other two were spot on. Why? Why is that? Did you spend more time with the other two training? Did they have a certain technique? Are they holding the measuring equipment or the sample differently? If you're going to do it, I videoed before, just to look at simple things of how a person lays a product on a table can make a big difference. How do you mixture
Aaron Moncur:A lot of what I'm hearing from you is , s really interesting, it almost sounds like like, you have the the inner spirit of a human factors designer or a few human factors, engineers that and it, is that something that you've looked into or even
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah
Aaron Moncur:Played a role in in the past?
Kirsty Crofton:For sure. This is how I think about it. People talk about leadership, and they talk about how important listening is. And I think turning that to engineering, I think the synonym of listening is watching. Right? Like the power of listening in a meeting. It's similar to like, if you're dealing with design or operations or manufacturing, it's just watching. That that's your type of listening. Listening to the process listening to the product is watching.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah
Kirsty Crofton:Seeing how it's being held, seeing how people are using a fixture using equipment from a manufacturing standpoint from an R&D standpoint, I think, watching your product, for me watching my products in the cath lab in in and hospital is so different than being in the lab. I'm like'Oh, why would they hold it like that?' I was like, 'Oh that's where, we need to make this shorter. This, this tablet device, we need to make it shorter it's too long.'
Aaron Moncur:Yeah
Kirsty Crofton:Things like that. Very simple, but very easy to be overlooked.
Aaron Moncur:What are the problems that you most enjoy solving and if you can think of one maybe share an experience or a story in which you got to solve that kind of problem?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, oh man, solving prob, I mean that's just the bread and butter in which idea, right?
Aaron Moncur:Right
Kirsty Crofton:I mean, I personally love investigations. I get this weird you know sense of adrenaline when we have a problem we got to figure it out. I love to do it. And some some are very serious, I've had to deal with pretty serious investigations in medical device. Launching a new product you in turn learn things right, that this product is being used for the first time, we're challenging the design, we're giving it to new physician, so I've dealt with anything from a very simple investigation that takes one day to things that I've been on investigation that took me three years to figure out.
Aaron Moncur:Wow
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah so one one example I'll let you know is we started getting complaints about one of our products and from the fields and so we quickly call some of our hospitals, 'Hey, can you can you send back some of that product from that same lot? Let me look at it.' So we go and we take this product and I immediately again I go down to the floor and I show it to my operators. I'm looking at I'm like it looks fine. I'm give it to my operators and they're immediately, 'Oh, but this is, this is a problem we forgot a step.'
Aaron Moncur:Really
Kirsty Crofton:Like a diving step, and we were like well why how did this happen? And we found out that this lot was coming from another location that Edwards has, we have different manufacturing locations. And so fast forward a lot of investigation, why were we only getting it from this one manufacturing site versus the other. It turns out that us in in California, we're like the R&D product development and what we do is we transfer the manufacturing process to our big manufacturing plants. And in that transferred manufacturing, knowledge was lost, right? So we had an operation step and it was, it was called out in the procedure but not really well defined. And so in Irvine in California, all the operators were trained by the the operators who had been on that product for so long, so they knew to do it. But when we transferred it that knowledge got lost.
Aaron Moncur:Interesting.
Kirsty Crofton:It just shows you the importance of you have to document things, you have to miss mistake proof things, you have to make sure that you're most skilled operator technician is not going to be the person that makes every single product. Bringing in someone new off the street needs to be able to pick up your procedure and, and and make that product. So something so simple can turn into two year investigation.
Aaron Moncur:That's a great story. Thank you for sharing that. What are a few of the biggest challenges that you encounter in your role?
Kirsty Crofton:Challenges? For me, I tend to take things very personally. So I'm, I kind of joke I'm like married to my products, I care about them a lot. And so when they go out to the field for the first time or launching a new product, it's very stressful, going into that first patient, that second patient, it I think for me, that's a challenge because if something goes, and for the most part we are, we have these quality system setups for our products are safe, but let's say manufacturing issue gets slipped out or, or maybe a design flaw comes up that we should have optimized. I take that very hard. Almost too hard, and it really gets me down.
Aaron Moncur:Yep
Kirsty Crofton:But so I think that that's a big challenge for me in this field of work.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, being so emotionally invested in this baby, right, this product that you helped create
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, it's a class three medical device. But then, on the the other end, it's what motivates me, right? That's what gets me out to work every day. It's what makes me want to work harder, it naturally has that motivation, because you're helping people.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, right.
Kirsty Crofton:It's a little bit of both.
Aaron Moncur:you could choose to have a role or a career where everything is even kill, right? There aren't huge peaks and huge valleys. But you don't get maybe down very often. But you also don't get those highs. Or you could choose something like you were you're really emotionally invested, which means you have these high highs and these really low lows, right, when things go wrong. That's a big deal. And but when things go, right, that's also a huge deal. I'm guessing that your preference is towards the latter.
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, and for the most part, it is, like the, the, the amount of people that we save is so much larger than the amount of cases that don't go as well. And even when I'm talking about don't go as well, the case may have been fine. The patient got his therapy and walked away. The patient may not even know that anything went wrong. But maybe there was something that wasn't optimal, you know?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Kirsty Crofton:And so, yeah, you take that, you take that hard.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Great. All right. Well, well, Christy, I don't want to keep you too long here. But this has been a delightful conversation. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to talk with me. Before I let you go, how, how can people get a hold of you?
Kirsty Crofton:Yeah, yeah. So LinkedIn is a great platform. Yeah. No, I think it's awesome to kind of see different articles, different professionals on there. So that's a great avenue. And then have you have any specific questions and totally open. You can always email me my personal email. It's kirstycrofton@gmail.com. So that's KIRSTYCROFTON@gmail.
Aaron Moncur:Excellent. All right. Well, Kirsty, thank you again, so much for being on the podcast.
Kirsty Crofton:Thank you. Bye, have a good day.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron Moncur, Founder of Pipeline Design & 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 testfixturedesign.com Thanks for listening.
