Join our conversation in which Tim shares with us his experience as a machinist fabricating custom Harley-Davidson motor and drive train components, growing up in the Mojave Desert, and reprocessing one-time use medical devices. Tim also shares his wisdom surrounding understanding our businesses and production lines at a high level to avoid the trap of tunnel vision as an engineer.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical 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.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
Join our conversation in which Tim shares with us his experience as a machinist fabricating custom Harley-Davidson motor and drive train components, growing up in the Mojave Desert, and reprocessing one-time use medical devices. Tim also shares his wisdom surrounding understanding our businesses and production lines at a high level to avoid the trap of tunnel vision as an engineer.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical 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.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 Tim Rempfer, who grew up in the Mojave Desert, earned a degree in industrial arts from Humboldt State University in California, and then went on to design custom parts for Harley Davidson bikes, then transitioned into various engineering roles within the medical device space. Tim, welcome to the show.
Tim Rempfer:Good morning, Aaron. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Aaron Moncur:You're welcome. Yeah. So I wanted to start by talking about the Mojave Desert. I am in Arizona so I'm very familiar with the heat, but what was it like growing up in the
Tim Rempfer:Basically very very dry. You get the occasional Mojave Desert? flash flood, rain, but, I mean super super dry. We would look forward to like every four or five years going out and seeing the wild flowers on the desert because it's a very occasional thing. Summers very, very warm you get a string of days where it might go to 100-105 but wouldn't typically last too long. Knowing people down there still it has gotten warmer over the years. So
Aaron Moncur:Is that right, global warming, huh?
Tim Rempfer:Well yeah, maybe. Yeah, well, I think we either that or longer term patterns that we don't understand. So yeah, it could be either one as well.
Aaron Moncur:What what did you guys do during the summer? I mean, I know my kids if they're not in a pool they're not outside during the summer
Tim Rempfer:Well it's a little different back then. No internet, not a lot of computer games. So we were out and about riding our bicycles chasing lizards catching snakes it didn't matter our we go down if it was warming up, if we thought it was too warm, we go down and actually splash around in the river because the Mojave River actually flows right through the town there so it's a very small
Aaron Moncur:Okay
Tim Rempfer:Don't get me wrong it's a very small trickle of water but it was still a great place to go and catch frogs just hang out there we're rocking the rocks to climb on it. Yeah, we pretty much entertained ourselves a lot
Aaron Moncur:That sounds amazing so the summertime you guys were still outside playing around and it's not like you
Tim Rempfer:No, that was that's where we lived as much as we could.
Aaron Moncur:And what were you like growing up I mean, were you into I don't know mechanical things, were you taken apart bikes were you playing with Legos alive? What was what was life like for you?
Tim Rempfer:So it was a lot self entertainment. A lot of reading, got into reading early. I guess, I was probably beginning to read probably by the time I was five. So got into that early, and then was interested in just, yeah, all things mechanical, we take stuff apart. Dad wasn't a patient teacher. So we use his tools when he wasn't around, and we'd work on our bicycles keep those fixed and repaired. So no big deals there. But later on, my brothers were older than I were, and they both went the Navy as soon as they could get out of high school. And this is all of us wanting to separate from where we were growing up at. And I ended up hanging out with one of their high school buddies, and he was a mechanic and he taught me a lot of ranching and also taught me how to drive a stick shift and another thing so he was kind of a surrogate big brother. And that's really where I got into the gearhead mode so that's how it started.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, nice. So you you went to college you got a Bachelor of Arts in Industrial Arts and actually wasn't really familiar with what what what a degree in industrial arts was so
Tim Rempfer:It's it's a dinosaur degree that really doesn't exist anymore. So I'm not surprised you haven't seen it.
Aaron Moncur:Okay.
Tim Rempfer:Several schools were offering it at the time when I went to college. Chico had it. San Luis Obispo actually where Andrew went to. That was an adjunct program under I believe, school of science. A few places maybe back in Kansas or Iowa still have somewhat of a similar program, but it's really kind of a lost thing now. As I described in the blurb that I sent you, it was a program for mid level management people or vocational education teachers, that was what the program was designed to direct people towards.
Aaron Moncur:And what what are the industrial arts? I mean, if you could just name a few of them?
Tim Rempfer:Oh, yeah, well, I mean, it's pretty much a wide ranging set of industrial skills, whether it was a drafting, electronics, woodworking, metalworking of various types and the metal shop had machining capabilities, welding capabilities, foundry capabilities at that time even. And then there was a large automotive contingent handed up by Professor Frank jolly, he was awesome too. And it was controls, steering controls, so brakes, there's hydraulics, engine rebuilding all that stuff. Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:When you enter the program, was there, was there a specific job role that that you wanted to get after graduating? Or was it just more of a general, let's get a good base here and then figure out what I want to do specifically?
Tim Rempfer:Well, my thinking about it evolved. Originally, I got in there because I go, 'I don't want to be stuck behind a desk,' that was my original thought. I go, 'I want to have my hands engaged, my brain engaged.' And, and that's happened all through my career. But as I got through the program, and I realized, this is at a time when they were still really pushing critical thinking skills. So getting background and not only industrial process, but like materials and how to select those were different processes. I saw it as a cross functional set of skills that, it was, it was great and you apply some logic and some critical thinking, and you can pretty much become a designer. And we're like me, I just walked in the back door of engineering, it just was this evolving process through my career. So yeah, it was great.
Aaron Moncur:Your first job out of college was as a machinist, and a design engineer at a company called Sputhe Engineering and
Tim Rempfer:Yeah, Sputhe. Thank you. Sputhe
Aaron Moncur:Sputhe Engineering, okay. Where you guys specialize in designing custom part for a Harley Davidson motorcycles. Well, I was wondering what what was your process for A, identifying what custom parts were there was going to be a market for and then B, ensured that they'd be compatible with the the OEM components that were already on the bike?
Tim Rempfer:So my boss Alan Sputhe, he was genius. He's passed on now. But anyway, he started out as a pattern maker actually in a shop down in LA. And he learned how to do foundry. They're pattern making in foundry. So he was casting his own components. One of his speed records still stands out at the dry lakes down in Southern California. I can't think of the name where they used to run Southern Southern California Timing Association though. And they used to just like want to build these to run speed runs, and he had held to reference for some years and one of them still stamps, but he was designing his own motor components, and he was into the Harley's early he had the Sportster that was just scary it was fast but
Aaron Moncur:Do you remember what his speed record was?
Tim Rempfer:He, well, that was the unusual thing, it was the same bike. He went out and set a speed record at like 175-176 and change
Aaron Moncur:Wow
Tim Rempfer:Yeah don't miss out on that
Aaron Moncur:That is so fast and
Tim Rempfer:The dry lake
Aaron Moncur:Oh my gosh
Tim Rempfer:Yeah, well he gets better he came back. A Harley is a knife and fork, piston rod design. So the large journal in one fits inside of a double journal, because it's not a cost. It's a common crank pin. So he went back to the pits, took off one of the cylinders out one of the rods, put a deck plate over that missing cylinder and went back out racing a different displacement class and set a different record at 125
Aaron Moncur:Wow, yes, multiple records.
Tim Rempfer:Yes.
Aaron Moncur:Did you ever get on a bike going anywhere near that fast when you were working there?
Tim Rempfer:No, I wrote a couple of shot bikes but I didn't push them anywhere near to their their capabilities. What we, I mean the Harley aftermarket has a very enthusiastic crowd and our specialty was in a very narrow range we were only working on the evolution engines and then Alan had previously designed for ever got there a five speed transmission for the four speed shovelhead frames lead model shovelhead motors. So yeah, we are he also figured out a custom long shaft main shaft for the transmissions where you can get attach a kickstart so he put Kickstarter on a high speed
Aaron Moncur:How did you, how did you ensure that just the geometry the shape and size of the new gear train the new components would fit on the bike because back then I think correct me if I'm wrong, but you didn't have like 3D scanning to scan the bike and understand in a digital space where everything was how did you
Tim Rempfer:No
Aaron Moncur:Get everything to line up?
Tim Rempfer:A lot of it is hands on. And then also if you're dialed into the the bike crowd, there's a lot of old French Stover prints that were out there from the factory. So little bits and pieces of the Harley Davidson prints existed in people's hands.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, interesting.
Tim Rempfer:Across the industry. Yeah. And basically the lower end of the Harley Davidson didn't change from about 1936 all the way up through the ebos. So that was it. Mid 80s before they went to the twin cast on the next generation of motor so yeah, the the lower end was essentially the same. And the old ones used to have an ear that came off of the crank cam chest on the right side. And generally there was a generator is instead of an alternator there was a generator hanging out between the front cylinder and the down tubes of the frame. So we made that same cam cover retro to fit the newer crank cases. But that knows it's stuck out there. What we did instead was we spun on the oil filter instead. So that was an aftermarket goodie, so it made it give it an old timey look, except it was your your custom chrome oil filter body sitting out there instead of the old generator, like on the old bikes.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, what that, do you remember, what were some of the more challenging parts that you fabricated there? What were the challenges that you had to overcome to make them work with the bike?
Tim Rempfer:Well, I mean, Alan was definitely the genius that came up with the ideas and knew the market well enough just knew or knew what would sell. And I was basically I was the kid in the candy store that just got to go play on the machines and turn his ideas into a working working design. And that was so much fun. We were working with castings, and then more often with billet. As we got further into the design process, I think one of the most challenging one was his. I don't know if you're familiar with the rocker boxes on Harley's, but they, at least in the Eagles who are typically a three piece, there was a bass piece that bolted on top of the cylinder head. And then there was a sandwich basically piece, just a perimeter thing to give it some height and hollow capacity, and then a lid that bolted all together. And these had two gaskets, they leak like crazy. But it gave enough room for the rocker geometry up inside of that that case. So he designed a replacement that basically had a party line that was at an angle, a declining angle across the engine from side to side. And it had one gasket and basically had to come up with fixturing to hold that thing and mill it out of billet aluminum. So all of these, so the towers were in the base piece that held the spindle, the spindle shafts in the rockers, and then it had one gasket, and then this hollow lid that was shaped like the old Englishman's cap where it's a little deeper in the back, and then comes up to a flat brim. So if you can imagine these two pieces that are angled to each other, coming together to form basically a square block, but they have this angle party line, it was really incredible. And the reason he did it was the you could actually take off the lid inside of the frame when the motor was there, with the egos in the three pieces that was damn near impossible to do, because you just didn't have enough clearance to get those pieces apart, and then reassemble them. So it was a stroke of genius because it allowed people to work on their top into their bikes without having to pull the motors off trains, which is a real pain.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, interesting. I can see how that would be hugely helpful. Yeah.
Tim Rempfer:Yeah. Yeah, it was amazing.
Aaron Moncur:So it sounds like Alan and the team there came up with these ideas for improving the bikes. Why? Why do you suppose, or do you suppose that Harley Davidson knew that there were some, some room for improvement here? Why didn't they just make those improvements, was it just not enough time, they're pumping out bikes really quickly?
Tim Rempfer:It's a, it's a function of. And this is another aspect. I mean, I got such a breadth of learning small businesses and how some businesses worked. While the Harley factory itself was very reactionary, they were slow to change, they didn't like to change because they thought that they would take off too much of their customer base, I think that's my thinking. But at the same time, the aftermarket got so huge, that eventually they did exactly that. They said, okay, and that's actually what led me to leave that job was that they had, towards the end of my tenure there with Alan, they offered out this huge stock offering, and they use that money to reinvest in the factory, and they created their custom shop. Harley did not have a custom shop before that time. They created it at that time, and basically created an opportunity for the Harley Davidson as an enterprise to pull back a lot of that money that was being raised by the aftermarket. Because no other bike. Well, at least historically, they were the first bike, the people who own them, the first thing they do is they go out and drop all this big money on a brand new bike. First thing they do it stripped down to bare bones and rebuild it all with custom parts.
Aaron Moncur:Really?
Tim Rempfer:Yes.
Aaron Moncur:Incredible.
Tim Rempfer:Yeah. So they realized they were missing a huge business opportunity. And when they did that, I started looking around and I got out of there and the aftermarket walked off a cliff about I'd say six to 10 months after I left there.
Aaron Moncur:Wow. Good timing on your part.
Tim Rempfer:Well, at least, I would say at least 25-30% of the aftermarket dried up at that point.
Aaron Moncur:That's a big chunk.
Tim Rempfer:It is a big chunk. Yeah, there is money being made.
Aaron Moncur:So you mentioned that Spuhte was a small shop, right? I don't know how many people that you and Alan and maybe a few other people, what what were some of the, the lessons or the skills that you learn there having to wear so many different hats that you've that have served you well as you've moved on to other roles in different companies?
Tim Rempfer:Yeah, it's like, I think one of the big fails I had there was i was growing myself as a person because I was kind of an introvert growing up and trying to learn how to be a little bolder step forward a little more. I learned one of the lessons I learned there is you just can't there's a certain distance and formality, there's, there's this business or professional distance, you have to gain and earn, basically. And once people have broken through that, it's hard to set up. So as we have people roll through the shop, we have some turnover personnel. I found it difficult to build up like this lead role in the shop. I basically was partnered with one other guy, we were like the dynamic duo that got everything done that Alan wanted, myself and Dan, and he had left after some years, and I was there and I was still trying to manage various people. So it was it was an interesting trajectory also because Alan, I didn't realize it until later was that he always wanted a small shop. It snowballed on us. We got up to this huge growth. This is only a 40 by 80 shop. And we were doing about a million gross at the peak a year.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, that's great.
Tim Rempfer:Yeah, we were really cranking it. We were making complete engines, complete transmissions, shipping them out. And I think Alan was almost hating it because he was a victim of his own success. And he couldn't play in the shop. He couldn't play in the shop as much as he wanted to.
Aaron Moncur:He had to be the business owner.
Tim Rempfer:Yeah, exactly.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Tim Rempfer:But I think that was one of the lessons was that professional distance and keeping an eye on things. But I also learned inventory, how to keep inventory of tooling, because I was basically responsible for keeping the mills running out there in the shop. We had two CNC Mills there at the end.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. And you were the one who made that transition from manual machining to CNC machining, right?
Tim Rempfer:Yeah, I walked in. And basically, Alan had a lot of the same manual machines that I had studied with in college and like my, my, my professor said,'Yeah, you'll never see this out in industry.' I laugh because it's first thing I saw in the shop. So I was familiar. And it was easy for me to get my foot in the door and go and he's like, and I was like, great, you can run this stuff. That's wonderful. And then of course, playing with different materials, because we used to make these stainless dragster cylinders had no fins on them. Think of like a big spool that you normally a thread on, but they're bigger, and they were a hard chunk to machine. And I almost screwed one up. And these were like, $1,000 set, but that was the other thing that like I said, kid in the candy store, Allen gave me an opportunity to learn to make mistakes to like, really grow myself, I appreciate that about the opportunity to.
Aaron Moncur:So you have this incredible opportunity to work as a machinist actually manufacturing parts that most engineers never have. And as a result, you probably have a lot of insight and just raw hands on experience that allows you to design parts in a way that are easily manufacturable, especially when it comes to machining CNC work for for engineers out there that just don't have that same opportunity that didn't work as a machinist. Are there any, any pointers or tips that that you can offer that would help us all be more efficient with our design for manufacturing?
Tim Rempfer:Well, I think it's, it's an ever changing market, too, and ever changing philosophy about how you approach stuff, too. It's funny, you're talking about the CNC and yeah, I did that for some years. But it was mainly at that shop. And after that, I got better at designing parts to vent out to a vendor. But right now I've come full circle because I realized that our lead times and our costs of designing concepts and building conceptual models and bringing stuff up to a production standpoint, often require some noodling. So I was actually the champion here at my current job about a year and a half ago to find and secure a manual mill. And now I think that's my way of teaching people the importance of how you design because now they see the sequence of how the parts are made. Because it's their thinking that fixtures this stuff, it's they're thinking that like, Okay, I'm basically I'm the CNC I'm the code, I'm the driver, I'm the ones putting the power to the motors, as far as the drive to make these cuts in metal or plastic, whatever it is. But it's also this tool that gets your creative juices going in on it shows you how you should design how you should sequence stuff. And it also, it also when you get concepts, you realize stuff doesn't go together, or it's clunky to work on. So for doing maintenance, that's another like huge level, it's not just getting the thing to work. It's like, how do you keep this thing running because it has a life cycle? So I think right now, what I'm doing with the teaching on the manual mill is kind of one of the best ways of showing people how they should design and how to get around some of the blind alleys. I don't know if that quite directly answers your question.
Aaron Moncur:Have you had design engineers make their own parts? And maybe you're mentoring, you're helping them make their own parts on the mill? But have you had them actually designed to then make several of their own parts? And then put them together? Is that how you're using the the manual mill to teach them? Or have they not really made full components, but maybe just a couple features here and there?
Tim Rempfer:Only a couple of them that have made actual conceptual models that they've taken. Typically, we'll make something for a test bench where we're, we're saying, 'Okay, can we hold this part?' Because our current job, actually, we don't make our own parts in this current, this business that I mean, we actually take single use devices, we reprocess them, but we have to test them to make sure they're functional to their original OEM specifications. So they're what the FDA calls still not statistically, but significantly equivalent. So basically, you're trying to show that whatever you've done to make this thing like new again, that it's going to perform, and have the same features and effects and performance as the original OEM device. So what we have to do is we set up a lot of our concepts we're setting up for testing, or a lot of our concepts are actually how we fixture parts so we can get them taken apart, put back together in our process.
Aaron Moncur:Right, okay. Yeah, well, I'm going to take a quick break here and share with the listeners that the Being An Engineer Podcast is powered by Pipeline Design & 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 the devices. And you can find us at testfixturedesign.com. Tim, your segue there was just perfect into my little plug. Thanks for that. I didn't even plan it. Yeah, we're speaking with Tim Rempfer today. And why don't we just keep rolling with with what we were talking about. You're working at Medline renewal right now, as a senior engineer, and your team there reprocessors, one time use medical devices? Can you run us through the process of reprocessing devices? Where does it start? Where does it end? What are the steps in between?
Tim Rempfer:Yeah, it's it's amazing that it can speak to so many parts of it. I mean, our team encompasses a wide range of skills and focuses. And yet we're still a small team. So we are all aware of each other's roles. And I've been here 10 years, since it was a lot smaller. So are 10 years as well. So yeah, it's basically you have customers that you deal with, and they say, why aren't you doing this part, or once you're doing that part. So they're a bit of it is market research. And we have those people at our corporate office back in Chicago, and they engage us and our bosses, and they say,'Well, how about looking at this part?' And we do. So we get some of the OEMs, we find sources to purchase and bring them in. And then we're also looking for them for and at the same time, we're saying, 'Well, yeah, we do see those in our incoming stream of products.' Because basically everything out our surgery center ends up in advance that comes to us, and we have to sort through it, what we can work on. And there's a lot of stuff there that we haven't touched. And we have to understand the market opportunity, which is what's the, what's the margin on these things, what we can sell can we sell them for as a reprocess device. So there's some marketing opportunity at the front. And then of course, we say, 'Okay, if we want to develop this further, we get some use devices out of that stream.' And we start tearing them down and we see what's happened to them in actual use, and we compare those against the OEM devices we've purchased and then we have to then develop the strategy She have research through the FDA websites to say,'Okay, this is a certain classification of device, you require certain paperwork, you require certain filings, we require certain testing because of its classification, we have to prove different things, biological markers, performance markers, where there's a lot of different aspects of that device that we really dig into.' And we say, 'Okay, how does the OEM perform? What kind of standards are out there that this OEM says it performs to?' And we use those standards to form a strategy, a whole development and validation strategy to say, go through the thing, basically, one piece at a time and say, okay, does it need all the markers? Can we do it? And how successful can we be doing it, and just, it rolls from there.
Aaron Moncur:So there, there are doctors at the hospitals that are using these one time use devices, they finish, they throw them into a bin, and you guys go pick up the bin, bring the devices
Tim Rempfer:Comes to us
Aaron Moncur:Comes to you, okay.
Tim Rempfer:Yeah
Aaron Moncur:Perfect. Even better.
Tim Rempfer:Yeah
Aaron Moncur:It comes to you, you have this bin of devices that have been used, there's like blood and gunk on them, you have to clean those devices. Maybe there's some broken parts on it, you have to replace the broken parts, then you have to test the devices to make sure they still meet the the OEM specifications are still working, as well as the OEM device, the brand new OEM device works. And then and then you sell them back to the hospital that is that more or less the the process there?
Tim Rempfer:Yeah, well, you you covered a lot of the major steps. Yeah. So there's, yeah, there's cleaning, refurbishing, inspection. And then actually, we have to package them, you have to sterilize also. So there's also a bunch of stuff around that too. Absolutely.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Tim Rempfer:So you're, again, having to match up a lot of devices we've investigated. They truly are, what I like to call a perfect hand grenade, because there is so little engineering safety factor in these things that you pick them up, and they'll just about fall apart in your hands,
Aaron Moncur:Because they're designed to be one time use?
Tim Rempfer:Correct, correct. And they're like right on the edge. So and this is part of where we have to look at another aspect of the FDA investigation as we look at safety reporting out of the hospitals where they've had incidents with a particular device. And this is all catalogued through the FDA. And we have to look at those and seriously do risk management on our devices, too. So that's another huge area of what we do in the background is evaluate the risk, and ensure that there's enough safety factor in both the product and our process. And the resulting output, to make sure that we're like going, 'Yeah, we're confident we can get this to you is gonna work, you're not gonna have a problem.'
Aaron Moncur:As an engineer, well, even before I say that, Medline or any medical device, preprocessor has to understand the device that they're working on well enough so that they can, they can formulate the test plan and do the appropriate testing on the device, as an engineer yourself, has that been a fun process to dig into this device? And not really reverse engineering, but understand how it was designed and mechanically how it functions? And then do whatever you need to after that, to reprocess it.
Tim Rempfer:Yeah, there are actually, it's, it's a, it's one way you can see other people's thought process in their, their design strategies, because he's pulled these things apart, and you're like, going, 'Oh, I didn't expect that.' Some of these designs are very cunning. And they're also, of course, all the OEMs would love for everything to be that perfect grenade where you can't touch it.
Aaron Moncur:Right? And their profit
Tim Rempfer:It's their profit margin they're protecting.
Aaron Moncur:Sure, yeah.
Tim Rempfer:We're leveraging on it. And yet I feel, I don't feel guilty about that, because we're pretty greedy industry. We're keeping stuff out of a landfill. We're giving hospitals these big organizations, the ability to cut,, keep your overhead down, so we can provide better health care to more people. So yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Absolutely. Right. That's, that's the free market right there. If you can find a better way to do something more efficient, greener, better for the environment. That's, that's, that's your opportunity, your right to do so. Okay, so correct me if I'm wrong, I think that you've been part of designing a new facility for Medline, a large expansion or at least played some role in that.
Tim Rempfer:I would say pretty much every part of our engineering team has played a role.
Aaron Moncur:Okay. All right. Yeah. You made a small team. So
Tim Rempfer:Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's it is a design build. So we're very much looking to I mean, we moved into this current facility three and a half years ago. And we're like, going,'Yeah, we need more room.'
Aaron Moncur:Wow, great problem to have
Tim Rempfer:Great problem to have, but also another focus, when you come back to engineering skill sets you like going, okay, this is how we use this space, this is how we revise the space to get more out of it. And this is how we squeezed even more out of it, so it's this continuing concentration of effort, as far as how you use your space, and it's like, it's a newer thought concentration for me, our area of concentration. from an engineering standpoint because we have to make sure that there's a safety factor in there for our people, so they don't get injured working in a space. We have to figure out how to get more parts through there. So yeah, often this, you're in your life cycle your devices, because these are stuff, these are items that you're actually now producing. You're saying, 'How can I do more?' So yeah, it's very much different constraint. Yeah. So yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Designing a building is a lot different than designing a component for a Harley, or a medical device. Yeah. What, what what are some of the the issues that you've encountered, the 'Oh, shoot didn't see that coming' moments that that you guys have had to work through?
Tim Rempfer:Well, and this is, this is where I say the whole team is involved, because certain parts of our team, including my engineering director, who has a background in survey and civil work, also, even though he's a mechanical engineer, so he has a broad perspective, and he knows a lot of systems, and he's dealt with the powers that be like, at the county level, the city level, so he's got that background, same as with internally, we have to look at the FDA requirements and what we have to do her device. So he brings that to the table, and we have some great outside partners and our builders, and actually building engineering firms. So we have good partners, and we can solve those issues, it's more about, you have to have this rubberband focus, like, okay, look at the big picture, and then look at your little part you're trying to solve for this whole building encapsulation, like, okay, what parts have to go where, what makes sense, and underneath this is all the utilities in and out of the building, all your waste side, all of your utilities and waterpower. Everything, it's like, and that's where it gets a little hairy, you're like going, pkay, and I know, they spent many, many hours in meetings where they lock up half a dozen dozen people locked up in a conference room with a video on and they're, they're talking to our partners, and trying to develop and refine this building design, so that the contractors can then turn around and get their sub contracts, via
Aaron Moncur:Sure. Yeah.
Tim Rempfer:Yeah, there's, there's a lot of different aspects to this. And I'm glad I'm not taking care of the larger
Aaron Moncur:It's like a full set of expectise
Tim Rempfer:Yes
Aaron Moncur:In and of itself?
Tim Rempfer:It is. So in this case, I'm getting focused in on one product category, that we're changing our technology on how part of our processing. And that goes back to how do we get more product through another one of our engineers, he's a brilliant conceptual person he just comes up with, he goes, 'Whoa, what if we have this kind of a thing?' It sounds like some secret door in a in a Frankenstein castle. And you're like, what? You're like, at the same time, you're like, 'Well, yeah, that works.' That sounds really cool. And it flows from those conversations into like, 'Well, what does that really look like?' Well, it has to be this size and this shape, and it has to have this capability to to expand and do this and you're like, 'Okay, how much to take away? Okay, I'm guessing around 1000 pounds to start? Well, we got it down to around 500. Right. Okay, that's better. So it's just like it's nibble at a time, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time. So
Aaron Moncur:Right?
Tim Rempfer:If you understand the outside, and we did some testing, defeated the building engineers like going, 'Okay, here's the inputs, we're going to require to get this process to work.' And they took, they took that and they said, they asked us to do a couple more tests and they go, Okay, now we got to our brain on it, we know what you're up against. And and then they basically say, well, what's your vision of how much you want to do and how fast you want to do when we plug that in? And they say, okay, and we start hacking back and forth on designing constraints. And I think it's just this organic process. And at some point, you say, hey, we've got enough details locked down. One of the things that I'm working on is after we agree on the components of this update, we're actually going to make a scale model and just try it out. See, verify that works well. So yeah, so it's Yeah, facilities comes back to process in this in my particular role here. So it's, it's all integrated and no matter what aspect you find yourself, working on, you find that as time goes by, and your experience grows that you say, Yeah, I know enough about that, give me a couple of pointers, a couple inputs, I'll run with this and try it out. And I think that's just that confidence that an engineer builds over time. You just say, 'Yeah, I can figure this out.'
Aaron Moncur:Speaking of confidence built over time, can you share maybe a major success and/or a major fail that you've had in your career? And what what you learn from it?
Tim Rempfer:Well, one major fail what I said earlier was that ability to try and keep the professional distance another fail is getting so buried in work and not asking for help. The trouble that happened in my previous job where a little startup company was in the stenting business, which is class three implantable, it's pretty much your highest level of stress around device making, because you know it's going to go on somebody's artery next, around their heart. That end things got to work. Yeah So and we were doing validations like crazy that we were still in the startup mode. And we hadn't been bought by an A tronic yet, because the rest of the division, and I listen, these protocols open, and I was just like, there was a time factor. And I got called carpet for it. And I was just like, I realized, there, my big field was when you get so damn busy. It doesn't matter how busy everybody else is, you got to learn how to scream for help, too. So I think that was my big takeaway from that one that failed. I got everything buttoned up. We had a couple deviations. We figured everything out. Everything's good. All the data was there. I just hadn't done the last 5% and buttoned it up.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah.
Tim Rempfer:Yeah. So it's, it's the devil in the details. And it is that commitment to finishing stuff. So I guess that's one of the lessons learned out of that, too. It's just, you got to curate across all the way across the finish line?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, no, no shame in asking for help when you
Tim Rempfer:Right, exactly. And, and being a manufacturing engineer pretty much all the way through my tenure of medical device. The focus there is just like, 'Yeah, get her done.' But even when you get it across the finish line, you realize that's not yet because now you're in the lifecycle phase of that product. And like I said, there's ways you're looking for process improvements, bigger throughput, faster throughput, take some of the load ergonomically off of your operators. So they're not stressing out, maybe when they start, they're doing 500 parts a day, an eight hour shift, like, okay, you're pretty done. And by the time you're willing to lifecycle, you might be doing triple that. And they're actually stressing less, because it's moving smoother, because you worked out a lot of the kinks.
Aaron Moncur:That makes sense. Yeah. Okay, last question for you, Tim. If you had to start your career over again, what would you do differently?
Tim Rempfer:Wow. That's hard to say, because I've been in this so long, that I have an understanding of how much not just technology but society and how everything works has changed.
Aaron Moncur:Let me ask it a different way. What what would today's Tim say to the Tim back when you were just coming out of college that you wish you had known back then?
Tim Rempfer:Well, a lot of how business works, keep your eye on the big picture. It's easy to get lost in details and the minutia stuff. But I mentioned the rubberband focus, you have to basically step out and make sure your how your work is fitting in with everybody else's work saying whether it's an assembly line or anything else. One thing is you might spot somebody else's problems, you're watching each other's back to you might see a process for improvement or a place otherwise to grow your skills. It's easy to just get like, pigeon holed into a very narrow set of skills or or I guess work habits. But I think your curiosity and your ability to step back and look at bigger picture. Scope of of things, I think is a valuable, valuable tool to try and develop early. I know that as I developed it more, it's just been ever more helpful in my career.
Aaron Moncur:And like you said, that can be hard to do because you get lost in the minutiae and you forget that 'Oh yeah, there is this big picture.' Are there any tools or strategies that you've found helpful over the years that have helped you just I don't know reminded yourself to take that step back and look big picture.
Tim Rempfer:Well, a couple times getting to go out visit vendors and seeing how their process works. Sometimes you'll see something they're doing you realize like wait a minute, is that what causes that failure that I get every once in a while on a car?
Aaron Moncur:Ah, okay, yeah.
Tim Rempfer:So and this is another thing about stepping back, look at the picture. You understand if you're somewhere in midstream of a process for a production build, you realize that everything in the stack tolerances ahead of you does make a difference as to what how well, your part works. So I think this is part of the manufacturing skill set, it's been learned over the years is to look at everything swim upstream really is the key here is like, go back and look at where it started. And that's the thing I think I'm grateful about here with a small team is that we work closely together, from everybody trying to do that initial conceptual development to see if a product's worth chasing. And we'll have roundtables or brainstorm sessions, like on how do I get past this element? This is a problem. And with all the diverse and wonderful skill sets that we've developed here in this team, anybody who said advice might look at and say, bam, I think your problems there and everybody goes, click. No, it's it's kind of cool that way. So
Aaron Moncur:Very cool. Yeah. Well, Tim, I need to let you go. Before I do, how can how can people get ahold of you?
Tim Rempfer:I'm usually busy and I don't do a lot of like the professional media like LinkedIn. That's I once once upon a time I had it but I find that I'm just so engaged, that I really go home and work on some of my future metal projects, which is I'm trying to develop a interest in blacksmith I got the interest is develop the skill sets in blacksmithing and other metal forming capabilities.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, that sounds interesting. We might have to have you back for round two to talk about the metalworking hobby. That sounds cool.
Tim Rempfer:Now it's fun. Lately I've been working because blacksmithing is a bit loud, drives my wife nuts. I've been working on some smaller pieces. I've been working on edging stainless steel and I've actually made some good progress on that. So
Aaron Moncur:Very cool. That's terrific. Well, Tim, thank you so much for spending some time with us and taking us through the the Harley development and medical device reprocessing. This has been great. I really appreciate you being willing to come on the podcast and be a guest. Thank you.
Tim Rempfer:Well, thanks for letting me ramble. Appreciate it.
Aaron Moncur:You bet. 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 test fixturedesign.com Thanks for listefning.