Being an Engineer

S1E41 How To Communicate Between Development Groups | Lisa Somogyi

October 03, 2020 Lisa Somogyi Season 1 Episode 41
Being an Engineer
S1E41 How To Communicate Between Development Groups | Lisa Somogyi
Show Notes Transcript

Lisa started her career working in the construction industry designing the mechanical systems for residential and commercial buildings. A few companies later, and after picking up skills in automation, project management, and electro-mechanical design, she found her way to the design firm Cooper Perkins where she works now as the director of business development. 

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

Aaron Moncur:

Welcome to the Being An Engineer Podcast. Our guest today is Lisa Somogyi, who is a mechanical engineer in Bend, Oregon. Lisa currently works as the Director of Business Development at the product design firm Cooper Perkins, where she uses her background in systems engineering, automation, mechanical design and team coordination to connect teams looking to solve challenging product and technology technology development projects. Lisa, welcome to the show.

Lisa Somogyi:

Thanks, Aaron. Thanks for having me today.

Aaron Moncur:

Absolutely. I've been excited to talk to you. So first question, Lisa, tell us why did you decide to become an engineer?

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, that that is a good question. And I think

Aaron Moncur:

Perfect one to start with.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, exactly. Very appropriate. I think, well, I was younger, I always attached to the sciences and math subjects in school. But all that said, I never thought about being an engineer when I was younger, or even really in high school. And I was trying to figure out what I was going to do. I enjoyed extracurricular activities. I liked playing sports, and I loved art. And I wanted to be going to the fine art somehow. And I was having a conversation

Aaron Moncur:

Like the polar opposite, almost.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah. Well, I was having these conversations with my dad. He was like, 'Yeah, that's great. Lisa, what about what about engineering?' And I felt really fortunate, my dad was an engineer, and he always kept me involved with projects in the garage building stuff. And I'd even never even thought about it. So I went to engineering camp, a little known secret when I was a junior in high school, at the University of Vermont. And they let us try out a handful of different, I guess, types of engineering, and mechanical to me seemed the most creative in the visual, the hands on aspect that I liked about the art side of things. And so I went for it and stuck with it ever since.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, that's a really interesting connection. Have you found that being a mechanical engineering, getting to build things and work with your hands, prototyping, benchtop, testing, that sort of thing? Have you found that there, there is a link with your artistic side and being an engineer in that respect, allows you to scratch that itch, so to speak?

Lisa Somogyi:

I do. Yeah. It's funny, because as I was learning SolidWorks, and 3D modeling, rendering was this hot, new thing. And I really attached to that, and was fortunate to have a role that really leveraged, I guess, concepts and trying to make things look aesthetically pleasing, as well as robotically functioning at the same time. So finding that, like you were saying, finding that balance. Yeah. So

Aaron Moncur:

I think that's a rare talent. I've worked with a lot of engineers, and a lot of really good engineers, but it's rare to come across someone who is very good, technically, who can make things work functionally, but that also has that artistic flair to make things look nice as well. It's I think it's a huge bonus in an engineer.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, I like it. You know it's funny, just as we're talking to I was thinking about now, because I don't do a lot of beautiful renderings, things like that. But I do put a lot of proposals together. And I think now the consistent theme there is paying a lot of attention to detail as well, and trying to make sure visually, things are easy to follow.

Aaron Moncur:

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. All right, you work for a firm called ME Engineers, right out of college, I think, designing mechanical systems for residential and commercial buildings. Now, most of the engineers that that I've talked with are designing widgets, medical device or a consumer product or something like that. Tell us a little bit about the systems that you are developing at ME. Maybe what were some of the projects that you worked on? And how did you interface with architects and structural engineers?

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, that was definitely my first engineering real job after college.

Aaron Moncur:

Cutting your teeth, yeah.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah. Yeah. It was great. I, I was, that's in the construction industry. And so doing the mechanical electrical layout of residential building. have huge commercial buildings and retrofitting projects in between. And yeah, was able to leverage my, or leverage my knowledge of fluid dynamics, thermal systems, and understand from a building way, how many say is comfortable and you're in a restaurant and you don't get too hot. You're not too cold.

Aaron Moncur:

Oh, tell us about some of that. Right? Because that's interesting insight that you have that most of the rest of us don't? What, what did you learn there?

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, it's funny when I walk into a home or a restaurant or any any building now I'll look for an air register if they have exposed ductwork above them, like that was a little bit oversized, or I don't know how you're not getting a huge draft over there?

Aaron Moncur:

I know exactly what you're talking about. Every time I pick something up, I'm always looking for how was this made? Oftentimes, it's some plastic part. So I'm looking for parting lines, or injector pin marks or things like that. And my wife knows that I do this. And so every time she sees that she's just laughs at me. Oh, you're doing that thing again, being a nerdy engineer.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, there's always like that quick moment of a maybe a calculation or looking back to something from back in the day that you had to learn for?

Aaron Moncur:

Well, that's what all the cool kids do. Yeah That's what I think.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah. So

Aaron Moncur:

What was one of the projects that you worked on there? Like, what was your role? How were you being an engineering that in that arena?

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, I mean, it was it was a huge role on the coordination factor. One thing you talked about there was working with the architects, and the architects and other disciplines throughout a construction project. I had my requirements that I was building to that were comfortable temperatures, being able to, from overall footprint, I guess, make sure the energy loads for the entire system, and the individual sub rooms, were consistent throughout. And so working closely with the architects to make sure that what I needed from the ductwork side, or being able to put a register, or one of those air handling unit somewhere, that they would either be able to cover it up with the right feeling height or adjust for something in the closet. So coordination from just the structural, the foundational and the aesthetic looks to that. We see when you walk into a huge lobby of a hotel.

Rafael Testai:

Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Somogyi:

A restaurant that has some hip little entryway. Well, if it's snowing outside and warm inside. That's all done through mechanical engine.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, right. problem solvers of the world. It's interesting listening to you talk about working with an architect, because the way I think about it, and architect is the construction analog to the industrial designer with product design world. And we had a guest on the show a little while ago, who, who talked about that dynamic a little bit and how to communicate between mechanical engineers and industrial designers. And, and there was a very specific method that he followed and had to discover. And before discovered it, it was very difficult to communicate with the other teams. So did you find that there was, I don't know, specific ways of communicating with the architects that made things flow smoother, or was it just easy for the beginning?

Lisa Somogyi:

I mean, I think one of the one of the that was very early in my career, but one of the things that I really pulled from that was just the importance of communication and trying to have open conversations about difficult things as well as when it was easy to coordinate between my plans and their plans. I think one of the key things that I did learn from that and tried to keep always is to have conversations from the very beginning, when you start planning, it can be on a conceptual side, and integrating all different stakeholders are different parties that are involved or have influence in the final product or the final building that you're building, even beyond engineering, trying to bring in all of the all of the interested parties as soon as possible.

Aaron Moncur:

Hugely important, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Lisa Somogyi:

I guess the most flexibility I think if you know other, everyone else's goals and agendas, trying to keep those aligned

Aaron Moncur:

Well, from from me engineers who jumped to square one systems design where I guess they focus on robotic automation. It seems like was it mostly government work? They're like, DOD, DOE?

Lisa Somogyi:

It was it was a lot of government funded work. Right? So this was a really early stage technology development firm where we were trying to, I guess, what's the word? No, we were trying to prove the technology for a positioning system. And there's many different applications for that. A lot of the areas that our clients were in were the high energy physics labs. And the idea is that it's very precise, but scalable, positioning control.

Aaron Moncur:

What, what were you positioning?

Lisa Somogyi:

So in one case, we were positioning a sample in spallation, neutron beam at Oak Ridge National Labs. And so this was a an environment that you weren't able to inter do sample exchange, because of radiation and really dangerous environments there. So having remote automation of sample handling, as well as really high precision, robotic positioning of samples. So our client was the scientific community there that was trying to execute these experiments. And we were providing the mechanical and electrical hardware to enable that.

Aaron Moncur:

Interesting. And all it was all being done with, like some kind of six axis robot something like that?

Lisa Somogyi:

Right? We had. Yeah, I mean, it depended, the idea behind this technology as it was transferable and scalable. So if you we used an articulated arm to do some of the some of the positioning of the samples itself, but then the fine tuning of the sample was through six axis manipulation of motors, that were coordinate, the motion was coordinated around a point in space

Aaron Moncur:

Very cool.

Lisa Somogyi:

Defined, coordinated around that point in space. Yeah. Yeah, that's where I learned about motor calibrations. And going down to some of the articulated arm suppliers, like Staubli, down in South Carolina and characterize their robot to make sure it could meet the really tight performance that our end client then would need with a unique application.

Aaron Moncur:

One of the projects that you worked on was verifying walking robot technology, what what were the robots being used for?

Lisa Somogyi:

So this is another technology development. So trying to basically take the base technology that we have for this positioning system, and combining basically two subsystems in order to create a walking mechanism. And the idea behind that is started off by a pretty simple motion. So rastering a field if you wanted to, very precisely, monitor or evaluate sample, what you could find out in the field and know that you were hitting every corner having something. I think crops use this, but you roster a field by going in rows

Aaron Moncur:

Okay. Oh, I see.

Lisa Somogyi:

It's hard turns. I'm doing a 10. But

Aaron Moncur:

Almost like, like a Roomba vacuum cleaner, going back and forth on the floor, making sure that it hits all the different areas

Lisa Somogyi:

In our predefined pattern.

Aaron Moncur:

Yes, yeah.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah. So it was, um, the original project was trying to do some subsurface evaluation. And we were working really closely with another partner who was developing some ground penetrating radar technology at the same time. So the toes of each of the robots, or each of the toes of the robots had a subsystem being developed by a partner of ours, a sensor. And so we had to, again, coordinate and understand how far away our legs could be from each other in order to triangulate that pattern. Yeah.

Aaron Moncur:

That's very cool.

Lisa Somogyi:

Well, yet getting the motion the travel the translation in order to meet the speed.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah. Yeah. Reminds me of the company, what is it is, is it Boston Dynamics now that has that like Cheetah robot that we see on YouTube all the time?

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, yeah. It's funny. I met Helen Greiner one time, just real briefly, and

Aaron Moncur:

Really

Lisa Somogyi:

Did you want to know but as a woman in engineering, especially a while ago finding someone else who had been in the industry for a really long time and meeting them. A little star struck.

Aaron Moncur:

Fantastic. Yeah, you got an autograph.

Lisa Somogyi:

Oh, yeah, I would have had to make up some reason. Yeah.

Aaron Moncur:

Well, let's talk about real mobility, because that looks like a really cool, like just a fun technology in that company. Maybe just share a little bit with the listeners about what real mobility was? Or is, what what they do.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, the, the idea behind the company itself was to enable a different mode of automation in wheelchairs. So, one would be a, like a bicycle hand crank in order to get different exercise different motions. And just for a different experience.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah.

Lisa Somogyi:

Another option was trying or was to optimize around a typical hand motion and using a specific geared mechanism that enable the person to use levers, instead of actually grabbing the rims of the wheels itself. Had electric assist capabilities as well in order to assist when necessary the motion.

Aaron Moncur:

Cool. It's like all these E-bikes nowadays, right that have this full assist. So it's not so hard to pedal up a hill.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That was in San Francisco, too. And

Aaron Moncur:

Oh, wow yeah, we use it there.

Lisa Somogyi:

Definitely, we go out behind our office and test these out. And there were definitely some some good test platforms there with the hills that were right in our neighborhood,

Aaron Moncur:

For sure. I was looking at the website, the real mobility website. And this might be one of their newer projects, but they have a wheelchair where it looks like they just tilt the wheelchair up. So it's only on the rear wheels, none of the front wheels. And then they install this like aftermarket. Like a steering column, I guess. But it has, I guess there's a motor in there as well, maybe some kind of drive train. And so it's powered with this front, third wheel. And I mean, people are like, zipping all over the city in these things. It's quick, it's really cool. I mean, I, if I were in a wheelchair, I think that would be something that's fun and useful. Right?

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah. It's really enabling, I think, in a lot of ways. And

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah

Lisa Somogyi:

One of our main requirements is always safety and trying to enhance that experience. So, the wheel design is intentional, so that if you hit a pothole or curb it's accomodating.

Aaron Moncur:

Stuck

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Moncur:

You, you, I guess, worked with some Taiwanese companies, there was just the supply chain and getting components made any tips for the rest of us when negotiating with overseas companies? Anything that you learned back then that could be useful to listeners?

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, that was my my first experience working with an overseas vendor and the idea of a lot, there's a lot of no compromise and around time zones even

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah

Lisa Somogyi:

Let's try and coordinate

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, having phone calls it 11 o'clock at night

Lisa Somogyi:

Coordinate a time that everybody is able to meet? And, yeah, I mean, I think one thing that my boss at the time, there was really good to always making himself available on that front and found the importance of meeting frequently. I mean, we were trying to, we weren't, we were putting together a custom gearbox. And they were helping us again, coordinate between what was possible from a gear fabrication side, I did, I dug down deep into to be features and how wide a gear can be the gaps in between each of the gear teeth, the, the width of the gear in order to be able to structurally mesh with other gears. Yeah And it's really easy to have a calculator or some sort of simulation system where you can optimize around the performance of the gear set. But then when you go to try to make it, coming up with some of the tolerancing you're looking at process, you're looking at materials, cost, all of these things, working back and forth with them. It was a learning process on my my front and both trying to find that sweet spot of commercially available custom available and meaning some of our requirements and modes of communication. I mean, a lot of visual tools were used that CAD is amazing for that for 2D and 3D model. And being very diligent about walking through my process of where I was at to try to translate intent. And so a lot of times that was a drawing with in PowerPoint with all sorts of comments coming around to, coming around a tooth in the fire gear literally in order to explain the assembly where critical components were critical interfaces, and yeah

Aaron Moncur:

Pictures are the universal language, aren't they?

Lisa Somogyi:

Arrows, pictures, and numbers. I guess we're

Aaron Moncur:

Right. In math. Yeah.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah.

Aaron Moncur:

All right. Well, let's take a real quick break here and share with the listeners that testfixturedesign.com is where you can learn more about how my company pipeline helps 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. We're speaking with Lisa Somogyi who is the Director of Business Development at Cooper Perkins, product design firm, based in San Francisco. And, Lisa, it seems like it was maybe the next company for which you worked Picaro, that you, you really began your transition into the, the the manager or business side of engineering. You spent apparently a lot of time coordinating schedules and efforts with different teams. What are what are some of the tools that you use during that time that you still use to communicate between teams and in manage schedules and just coordinate processes?

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, so this trip down memory lane

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, right? This is fun

Lisa Somogyi:

Of my background, it is fun. It's been a while since I've walked through all of these. Yeah, Picaro. It was great. We had a manufacturing team, we had our hardware team. And we were manufacturing shipping out custom parts or custom systems to the scientific community, while at the same time trying to create a baseline or creating a baseline platform for the utility companies that was in higher quantities. But the focus being safety trying to help the user more easily detect natural gas leaks. And yeah, some of the tools we mean, we had a lot of formal tools that we used, as far as part numbers, I think that that was probably one of the first times that a automated part number numbering system.

Aaron Moncur:

Okay

Lisa Somogyi:

That's one that I use generated through a program called Arena. And then those ones were the numbers that we had to coordinate on our SolidWorks drawings. And that would then be translated to the manufacturer. And having all three of those units. internal to the company was nice. made that approach. We always knew what part we were talking about. I think that's one thing, part numbering, that is a controversial topic. You're looking at building out bongs and assembly components and ordering between off the shelf and custom components. And it really helps streamline that whole process, I think having one single source of part numbering

Aaron Moncur:

And this Arena application, was that, like, the software as a service kind of thing, or was this something that you guys developed internally?

Lisa Somogyi:

Definitely not developed internally. These are all

Aaron Moncur:

Okay.

Lisa Somogyi:

It was an available software that. Yeah, it organized part numbers, it helped with engineering change orders to be able to control when things needed to be modified, what needed to be modified, who owned that, so it was a way to help track changes.

Aaron Moncur:

We use a poor man's version of that. It's just an Excel spreadsheet, but we have all the part numbers in there and the company names and that sort of thing. You helped implement an agile process in the company with a focus on on hardware team adoption. Can you share with us a little about how Agile was used for hardware teams and, and maybe what were a few basic principles that those of us managing hardware teams can adopt.

Lisa Somogyi:

I should be clear that the software team was driving the Agile development and the hardware team therefore had to be brought along on this journey. But I embraced it, for sure. I think it was, we went we all have a little bit of training to learn some of the high level touch points. And that was really helpful. So we were software and hardware team before who had struggled to find ways to be on the same timeline and be on the same project plan, be able to meet deliverables coordinated? And

Aaron Moncur:

Sure, and how did Agile help you do that?

Lisa Somogyi:

I think it just comes back to the regular check ins and the deliverables that were necessary. I mean, we struggle in hardware, because there's this delivery time, when parts are being fabricated, or you're procuring parts from a vendor, and the software guys don't have to worry about those lead times, right?

Aaron Moncur:

It's all just ones and zeros,

Lisa Somogyi:

In a way, but it also, it shed some light on in the other way, too, that they understood a little or it was it was an avenue to help bridge that imbalance, or at least that assumption, and delivery times are then put into timeframes and put into project plans where historically, if I was putting a project plan together, why does this take six weeks? Well, actually, it takes at least two weeks to get anything from any vendor if you're going this process and takes at least five days to get anything from here. And

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah.

Lisa Somogyi:

McMaster doesn't actually deliver overnight to everywhere.

Aaron Moncur:

Which at this point, just feels like such a burden. Because we're used to getting McMaster things The next day, right? So if you're somewhere where you don't get it the next day, as a QA, come on, how long do I have to wait here?

Lisa Somogyi:

It's true. It's true. I mean, you don't have to get that far out to not necessarily be relying on two day delivery or something.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so it sounds like it was really just coming up with methods of communicating between the teams that allowed everyone to be on the same page.

Lisa Somogyi:

I think that and having as a team, different perspectives in different steps of the project as well. So there were more people reviewing there were more people giving input you were a little bit more aware of, in our daily stand ups and things like that you're more aware of problems that teams are facing, whether that's a resource, whether they're waiting on something. And so it really helps, not just from a formal coordination, but also everybody understanding where people were at. And if they needed ways that people could help people out that you wouldn't think of if you were just looking at a checklist or a project plan.

Aaron Moncur:

But how do you balance the need for effective communication with just overburdening the team with like, all these meetings? I mean, if you have 10 people in a meeting for an hour, that's that's $1,000 meeting or more, and maybe not all those people need to be in there. But but some of them probably do. And maybe there's some serendipitous occurrences, for the ones that didn't think that they needed to be in things that wouldn't have happened or occurred good things if they hadn't be there. So how do you strike that balance between enough communication but not just overburdening? People with excessive meetings and that sort of thing?

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, as we were learning it, definitely, that was one major pain point.

Aaron Moncur:

Okay.

Lisa Somogyi:

And I think, even now, meetings are there, they can be tough, especially when you have large audiences and being able to, I think the one thing that having meetings does encourage or having these frequent, regular cadence of full team meetings is trying to find the most efficient use of that time. And it's on each individual to make sure they're bringing the most pertinent information to that conversation. And also doing a little bit of prep work for finding out what they are asking the greater group, there's definitely opportunities to have side conversations. And I think recognizing the point that that doesn't have to happen within the larger group is really important. But maybe catching that person during that large meeting or that thinking meeting. Yeah, puts it on their radar.

Aaron Moncur:

You mentioned the the daily stand up, is that something that you still do now? Or was that just back at Picaro?

Lisa Somogyi:

Well, that was part of that Agile system that we were adopting there.

Aaron Moncur:

Okay

Lisa Somogyi:

Picaro I don't do daily stand up now. Our our team does when it's necessary on the project teams and when it makes sense

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah

Lisa Somogyi:

To make sure that, I think we found recently with everybody working remotely a quick little daily standup was a nice sink spot because people were working on their own or have been working on their own. And even with, within my team and the team that I'm on here at Cooper, Perkins now, having those common or quick touch points, they don't always have to be a list of things that you've come up with to call somebody because that is a big conversation. And even in my personal life, it's like, 'Okay, finally, I should probably call this person

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, right

Lisa Somogyi:

it's been a long time.' And, but having those quick calls in between, just as touch points are to sync up. And now being finally like,'Alright, thanks. That's it. Gotta go.'

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, I think that's a great tool we do. We call it our 'daily huddle.' But we do that every morning. And it takes maybe, 10 or 12 minutes or something for for our team, which is not a huge team. But everyone just takes maybe a minute, it's not very long and says, This is what I'm doing today. And you mentioned this specifically, but it's a great opportunity to prompt ideas or thoughts, or, oh, I do need to touch base with this person and talk about that thing, or those those spontaneous moments that otherwise wouldn't wouldn't come up. I found it to be a really useful tool that that daily huddle, just real quick, 10 minutes, get it done and move on.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, the key of real quick, I think

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Somogyi:

It's nice

Aaron Moncur:

Nobody wants to be in there for half an hour or an hour. Just take 30 seconds. 60 seconds. Tell us what you're doing and, and move on.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Moncur:

Well, let's talk a little bit about the company at which you work now, Cooper Perkins. You've been there for about about two and a half years coming up on tell us a little bit about the company and why you decided to join their team.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, so Cooper Perkins, we're an engineering practice. And we approach business needs that can that can be solved with mechanical and electrical engineering. And so as we've just recap, I've been in a lot of different industries, throughout my career, and being able to pull from those experiences, to work still in a very technical field and apply my knowledge of mechanical and electrical engineering, my peripheral knowledge of electrical engineering, to learning about what potential partners have as far as the struggles they're going through, or the product development needs, what kind of support that we could provide them with our mechanical, electrical engineering skill set has really been exciting for me, I get to learn about what's going on in different industries that I've never worked in before, and try to find ways that I can bring projects back to our team so that they're excited, and they're working on new technologies and pushing their existing experience and what they, what they know is to be the leading edge while some of our partners are pushing that and trying to find new ways to to meet the product needs that they have.

Aaron Moncur:

Do you do you get to do much or any design these days? Are you full-time devoted to business development?

Lisa Somogyi:

I'm full time devoted to business development. And I mean, I think if anything, I've always enjoyed learning new skills and growing. And transitioning from engineering to business development has definitely provided that opportunity.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, in what way?

Lisa Somogyi:

I never remember one of the first early days, a couple years ago, and I was sitting there and I was trying to figure out the best way to remember what I was doing, like not going to a networking event or I was really trying to figure out the best way to interact with a group that I had nothing in common, but I had no known contact points. Right.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah.

Lisa Somogyi:

And, and I'm okay with that. But I remember just sitting there and one of my colleagues behind me was working on some CAD work and doing some motor selection. I was like, 'Oh man, that's so easy. That's an answer to qhat you're doing right there.

Aaron Moncur:

I can empathize with that. Yeah.

Lisa Somogyi:

But I think one, one thing that we always are seeking to do is find this overlap of business, technical and user requirements through the solutions that we provide. And that is our process. And that's part of how we define our systems and fully characterize what, what it is we're trying to build. And so it's really important to be able to ask some probing questions or some questions early on, to really try to understand what our what our clients or potential clients or partners are looking for. And I've enjoyed, have tried to figure out ways to have conversations and learn from the business side of things to why people are asking for what they are, what they're asking for.

Aaron Moncur:

Run me through your process, because I'm super interested to hear about this. Because it's something I spent a lot of time on what, how do you start with not having a customer to having a customer? What what what is that process? How do you do it?

Lisa Somogyi:

Well, I have a lot of support a couple of really great colleagues and leaders with in the organization that we all work together. But

Aaron Moncur:

Okay.

Lisa Somogyi:

I mean, I think there's a, there's a couple contributing factors, what, what's going on in the technology side of things, that's a good match for our skill set and our experience, where's that overlap of interest, lie, and core competencies. We do mechanical, electrical, firmware, biomechanical engineering, and so trying to search different industries, as well as existing ones that we've been in before. Historically going to events and not not necessarily prospecting events are looking for new customers, but honestly, trying to just figure out what are people doing? How can I stay relevant, and be able to have a conversation when a one does come up about a particular project, having that base knowledge so that I do know what they're talking about? And I know, we're able to, or at least know what they're talking about. I know what if we might be able to help them out?

Aaron Moncur:

What are some of the events that you've attended that have been helpful?

Lisa Somogyi:

I mean, I attend, I was attending a lot of events, small local ones in San Francisco hardware community ones, we work in the electromechanical systems space. So looking for that, that overlap. And there's been no hardware mess. I've had a couple of good hardware startup type events that were always great to go to. And, we, Fictive has a handful of fun things that they would do from community based events. And then larger things, of course, CES, and then going into the East Coast side of things. I've been to a handful of MIT and tech, they have a tough tech series, we've worked on a couple projects and have some connections through that. So trying to leverage or at least build on existing relationships. And as I started going to a handful of those couple medical device conferences and robotics conferences between Boston and San Francisco and a couple places in between. It's been fun to start seeing people I would go to one year, and then they see them again the next year.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, everyone's on the same circuit. Right?

Lisa Somogyi:

It's, yeah, and mine's pretty random. So anywhere from synthetic biology to medical devices to robotics and hardware startup communities.

Aaron Moncur:

Nice.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah.

Aaron Moncur:

I'm curious what what is the organizational structure like at Cooper Perkins? Is it a very flat structure or is a very regimented with an explicit hierarchy? How does that work there?

Lisa Somogyi:

I mean, I think there's there's not an explicit hierarchy. So much, there's some leadership roles and the project management teams as well as each of the practicing engineers. We have people on different experience levels are at our core We like to honor engineering, and that includes learning it, but also teaching it and helping our less experienced or newer engineers gain some of those insights that we've had as experienced engineers out in the workforce. So, overall, I would say it's flat.

Aaron Moncur:

Okay

Lisa Somogyi:

I feel ike, I'm not answering this question very great.

Aaron Moncur:

Well, we, we, I interviewed this guy, Reid, Reid Harper made priority designs a few months back, and he talked about how their structure is very flat. And everyone just does what what they want to do. They don't have any particular systems really, I'm sure they have sound, but everyone just does things their own way. And I've been really intrigued by that, what is that, is that a really effective way for most companies to do it? Or does it just work for them? Because that's how they are that's the culture they have? Or, or is there room for for systems and maybe some kind of balance there? So I've been asking people about how their organization runs.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, I mean, I would say that we have projects. And so people have to work on the project, the they're part of the team have, but when it comes to their everyday work, and how they choose to execute, that there's deliverables and timeframes that need to be met, but we really value the individual contribution of everyone on our team.

Aaron Moncur:

It's like Steve Jobs said, right? We we don't hire smart people to tell them what to do we hire smart people, so they can tell us what to do.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, definitely. I think, our team, we really, we were really a good balance. But everyone has a very strong educational and experiential background in the the fundamental physics and mathematics around engineering. And so that is a common thread of enjoying or wanting to define system architectures. By that that fundamental so you know exactly where the sensitive parameters are, and components in an early stage. So when you go into, like the momentum churning, driven part of product development, all of those questions and risks have been retired by knowing exactly the geometries involved, the equations of torque loads on a moment arm of a robot, and defector or something like that.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah. All right. I've got just one question left for you, Lisa. What are what are some of the biggest challenges that you run into at work?

Lisa Somogyi:

I think some of the biggest challenges for me has to do a lot. And I also embrace it is going into these new industries. It's always new to me, what people are trying to do, how they're trying to enter the market with a new product, and trying to empathize while understand exactly what their journey is. And so it's a, it's challenging to be able to relate sometimes be from a technical side of things, or even from a scientific base, if it's in a field that I'm not familiar. And they're

Aaron Moncur:

Okay.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah. Little background work that I always tried to do. But I'm getting zingers thrown at me all the time.

Aaron Moncur:

Right, right, yeah.

Lisa Somogyi:

And so I definitely embrace it. But, and that's what makes me sweat a little bit getting off.

Aaron Moncur:

So it's just it's figuring out a way to take this, this new information, maybe it's a new project, and mesh it with the, the math and the physics of the engineering that Cooper Perkins is already so good at. Find a way to combine them in a way that satisfies the customers' needs.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, exactly. And I think that, once I have that initial understanding of what they're trying to accomplish, and whether that is going back to what some other drivers are rom the business side, or he feasibility, where are those questions?

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah

Lisa Somogyi:

What are they missing? And sometimes, it's not always clear and that's not just my lack of understanding of an industry potentially, but if you're really trying to work on my conversation, and be able to ask questions, and no here How somebody is describing some of the challenges that they're running into, and not make assumptions necessarily too.

Aaron Moncur:

Sure. Yeah. Well, Lisa, this has been delightful. How can people get a hold of you?

Lisa Somogyi:

Well, I, field most of the inquiries that come in directly from our website. So anybody has any questions?

Aaron Moncur:

There you go.

Lisa Somogyi:

cooperperkins.com. I mean, we've got a lot of really great case studies on there. And there's description of our

Aaron Moncur:

It's cool website. I mean, I've been through the website, and it's, it's very well done. So I encourage anyone listening to go check out. Is it cooperperkins.com, is that the URL?

Lisa Somogyi:

Correct.

Aaron Moncur:

Yeah, it's it's a great website for product development from

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah, and I'm happy to answer any questions. I mean, you find me on LinkedIn do.

Aaron Moncur:

Okay, excellent. Well, Lisa, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate you hanging out on the Being An Engineer Podcast.

Lisa Somogyi:

Yeah. Thanks, Aaron. This is fun.

Aaron Moncur:

I'm Aaron Moncure, 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.