Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S5E44 Geoff Gaw | Nitinol, R&D, and How to Learn About New Technologies
In this episode of the Being An Engineer Podcast, Geoff Gaw discusses his journey into engineering, the unique processes and challenges involved in metal manufacturing, and strategies for leading teams in highly regulated environments. Geoff also delves into the alignment of product development with process development, staying up to date with emerging technologies, the future of the medical device industry, and ways to accelerate the speed of engineering.
Main Topics:
- Geoff's path to becoming an engineer and the inspiration behind his career choice
- Unique processes and challenges in metal manufacturing, particularly with nitinol
- Strategies for managing teams in highly regulated environments like the medical device industry
- Aligning product development with process development and the transition from R&D to mass production
- Approaches to staying informed about emerging technologies and trends in the industry
- Predictions for the future of the medical device industry, including the integration of AI
- Techniques for accelerating the speed of engineering projects
About the guest: Geoff Gaw is an experienced mechanical engineer specializing in the medical device industry. With a degree in Mechanical Engineering and minors in Materials Science and Energy Engineering from Cal Poly Pomona, he has held leadership roles at Edwards Lifesciences, Medtronic, and Applied Medical. His expertise spans project management, product and process development, and manufacturing support. He has overseen the development of complex medical devices, scaling teams, and driving operational excellence from early development stages to mass production. Currently, he serves as a Sr. Principal Engineer at Edwards Lifesciences.
Links:
Geoff Gaw - LinkedIn
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.
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Geoff Gaw:and then also just asking for help when I needed it, being able to set aside your product and saying, hey, you know what? This is a little much right now like, is there kind of some temporary relief that I could get from you know, either my respective leaders or other other leaders in the Group.
Aaron Moncur:Hello and welcome to the being an engineer podcast. Our guest today is Geoff Gaw, an experienced mechanical engineer specializing in the medical device industry with a degree in mechanical engineering and minors in material science and energy engineering from Cal Poly Pomona, he has held technical rules at Edwards life sciences, Medtronic and applied medical his expertise spans project management, product and process development and manufacturing support. He's overseen the development of complex medical devices, scaling teams and driving operational excellence from early development stages to mass production. Currently, he serves as a Senior Principal Engineer at Edwards Life Sciences. Jeff, thank you so much for being with us today.
Geoff Gaw:Thanks for having me. Aaron. I appreciate it. Listen to a couple episodes. So yeah, looking at me. Looking forward to helping the your fans and and hopefully we could, you know, inspire some people out there.
Aaron Moncur:I think my fans are limited to maybe my mother in law and my sister or something like that, but there are some, some people who listen to the show anyway, and we are trying to build a repository of engineering insight and wisdom and knowledge. So thank you so much for being willing to contribute it to to that repository and help the engineering community at large. Yeah,
Geoff Gaw:Definitely, of course.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, so first question, what made you decide to become an engineer? Yeah,
Geoff Gaw:let's see. So honestly, like you don't, at least for me, the way I grew up, you know, I didn't really have an idea of what engineering was, and I really didn't know too much about it until, you know, until it was time to basically declare for a major, which, you know, might be a little late for most people, or, I don't know, Maybe it's a little too early now, there was a big push from my family to, like, basically make me go into nursing, healthcare in some way. And you know that really wasn't like my thing. My thing was, or I kind of floated the idea of like business and marketing, but that was not a that wasn't so popular within a typical Asian household. So I kind of just had to do some research between math or science and and that's kind of how I found engineering as a field, and I selected mechanical engineering because I read up that, you know, you're looking at, like the jack of all trades, master of none. So I kind of like that flexibility in my head. But really, I think, you know, like going into the major pretty undecided and unsure. The the, I guess, event that really cemented it for me was, as corny as it is, as it sounds, is, you know, basically the first Iron Man movie that actually came out in May 2008 which is when I was graduating, so that gave me, I mean, just seeing the movie, and then, like, realizing, obviously, it's like a fictitious kind of level of possibilities, you know, like that was inspiring. I got inspired. And I felt it felt more. It felt better going into the major and the studies that I'm looking forward to in the future.
Aaron Moncur:That's really cool. I remember watching that movie and also loving the engineering aspect of it by Tony Stark and Jarvis and like their little product development lab down in the basement. It's always funny, as an engineer watching movies like that, and you know, of course, it's a movie, right? So you kind of expect some of this in like a day he makes these huge changes, right? And technological advancements in his suit, and Jarvis is doing his thing and, and you sit back and you realize that's probably like two years of work right there that they just did, yeah, in a day and a half.
Geoff Gaw:Yeah, yeah, no. I totally agree with you. I think the definitely an ambitious version of what our industry is. But I I just like the possibility. Like, to me, that's kind of what was like awe inspiring. Is like, yes, that's like, two, three, maybe five years of work. But you know, it's something that that is possible. So,
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, Yep, absolutely. And it probably wouldn't have been nearly as interesting a film if we had to watch two years of Tony, Stark developing things,
Geoff Gaw:yeah, good
Aaron Moncur:call by the director trying
Geoff Gaw:to escape a cave in the mountains.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, right, right, yeah, all right. Well, you have some expertise working with metals, in in medical devices, specifically, what what have been some unique processes involving metals or or maybe some unique challenges that you've run into specifically in the context of of metals.
Unknown:Yeah, yeah, well, so I have, like, total appreciation for all the intricacies that go into metal manufacturing prior to my current role at Edwards, what I found the most interesting at the time was metal injection molding. That was maybe when I got exposed to it was like, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, fairly new to the industry, but, you know, fairly new to the My department and like, what we were doing day in, day day out. I would say that was like, for the longest time, maybe the most interesting thing from metal sagittation For me, just because you're, you know, you're creating all these organic shapes, but basically leveraging like injection molding, in a sense, right, like the concept and idea of it. Obviously, there's a lot more that goes into metal injection molding than that, but from a general perspective, then at Edwards, I would say, like shape setting has been, like, a very unique processing that I've been exposed to. I'm still, like, very new to the whole shape setting world. And, you know, like, until Edwards, I rarely ever worked with night and all material and Edwards, that's all it is. You know, that's like their bread and butter. So I would say, like as of today, safe setting, by far, is probably the most unique, and also, like night and all material in general, is still so young in the industry. There's so much, so much to learn from it still, no, it's still an alloy that continued to be discovered against the speed and kind of different uses were.
Aaron Moncur:I remember the first time I handled a piece of Nikki, a piece of Nikki wire, fairly thin, maybe like, I don't know, 20,000 diameter, or something like that, and being amazed at the the super elasticity of it, right bending it and expecting it to plastically deform. But no, it didn't. It was still in within its elastic range. I know night and all has a couple different like transitional areas, and I don't recall the names of them, but bending it a lot, and it would spring right back to its original shape, which was really, really cool. I never, I never got to experience any of the the the shape, setting properties of it now, and I don't pretend to understand them well at all. But basically, you you set the shape somehow, and then when you heat it up, it kind of like reforms itself into that shape. Is that more or less how that goes, yeah,
Unknown:yeah. The, I mean, that's, I think, from a general aspect, you know, as accurate as it can be, your your leveraging tool that typically would would go into, like a salt bath, because you want the material to basically experienced homogeneous temperature all around it as it's being cooked, like that's the definition of Cook, or what people say, or that's what people say in my department. But, yeah, you cook. One. And then you have to identify, like, the proper time frame for it to kind of be at a certain temperature range. And then it'll, like you said, Hold it safe once you take it back out of the salt bath and remove it from the fixturing or tooling that you use to basically place that component it and then, yeah, everything is shaped. It's pretty cool. The, I think the complexities that go into it, like, you know, like shape retention, you know, the tricky part there, and I'm still learning, so I'm gonna, I may say some incorrect facts, hopefully not, but basically, Nikki has AF temperature that kind of determines its different wouldn't like its environment. So if the material had like AF temperature that now what's close to room temperature, it's likely to be in a different phase of like, its material phases as night and all, and you're not going to have the same stiffness, or it might become like more malleable. So that's also another kind of tricky part about like, shape setting you want to ensure that you're sending the AF temperature to something well below of your operating range.
Aaron Moncur:Fascinating. I bet we could do a whole episode just on Nikki and its properties. Oh,
Unknown:you definitely can. I would not be the person for that. You definitely want to find somebody with like, decades of experience. But, yeah, I mean, it's like, never ending kind of subject, which is nice. It's very cool to learn. All
Aaron Moncur:right, we'll move on from night and all for now, maybe next year, when you're like, stratosphere level expert, we'll have you back and do a full episode on night and all that, maybe. But for now, so you work in a highly regulated environment medical devices, right? The FDA regulates medical device companies. What? What are some challenges that you've had leading teams through product development phases in such a highly regulated environment, and some strategies that you've used to most effectively, like manage teams in that process. Yeah, I know documentation is probably, like a big thing, right? There's lots of documentation and medical devices. Yeah.
Unknown:I mean that the documentation aspect, you know, in my mind, when I, I guess, when I strategize, of like, how to form a team around a program, I definitely you have to pick, like, if you can hand pick your team members or the team that's always the most ideal, because you're going to hand pick the right characteristics and traits. But to your point, you know, you don't always, because of the documentation, detailed, and in reality, I don't always get to hand pick the team. You're going to have individuals that kind of just struggle in that environment. So you know, my option one, if I have the strategy to go about managing a team, is just select people that understand the value of like the documentation aspect, because I think you can, I mean, I don't like it. A lot of people don't like it, but as long as you understand the value of it. It's a lot more manageable as an individual, to go about your day knowing that, hey, you're going to have to draft up all these documents in order to show objective evidence, right, that the product you're making is sound and viable, yeah, but you know, obviously, most, of the time, you don't get to pick the people, so you kind of have to try to empower the stronger individuals in your team to lead their respective areas, and kind of just like drive them to motivate others, because you can't be there to motivate everybody else for that common goal all the time and for place. You know, yeah, most people are like, whatever. He's just saying that because he's a, he's a manager, you know, you've got to say that you hear from your peers a little bit different.
Aaron Moncur:So let's, let's dig into that a little bit more. There was a period when you were at Medtronic where you scaled a team, I think you almost kind of doubled the team's size, going from like 11 to 21 engineers, or somewhere around there, how, what were some things that you did to because as a team grows larger, it becomes a lot harder for people to communicate. For. Or the left hand to know what the right hand is doing. It seems like a level of, I don't want to say bureaucracy, but I don't know, just logistical challenges enter. Were there anything that you did in particular to to like, mitigate the level of overhead as the number of people grew in the team.
Unknown:Yeah, yeah. It was definitely very challenging to do to expand the team that quickly look at Medtronic. But, you know, one thing that I would say that kind of helped me going into this challenge was that this wasn't, it was almost like this wasn't my first time doing it, like I've had experienced, you know, the fortunate experience and in prior roles, to scale teams up, you know, from like it was just two of two engineers, or myself and another engineer, to to, like, 13 by the end of the year. Like I've so I've taken so part of, I guess, how I went about this is one I've been fortunate enough to have the experience. So that was good. Like I knew what to look for, I knew the traits that I needed, and I knew how to interview and kind of churn, churn through the process of, you know, getting people into phone interviews, figuring out who they are, and kind of getting a feel for them, but at the same time, it's almost like echoing what I was trying. You know, how I how I manage a team, is basically identify. I like to identify individuals that are high performers and kind of leverage them in opportunities to lead, mainly in the technical stream. I try not to push people to, like become managers, because it's a lot of administrative stuff, and nine times out of 10 people, like engineers, don't want to do that, like they want to do all the fun technical work. So I leverage that to help me. You know, as you say, like have limited overhead, right? Like I didn't need to be there to see everything, because I had X amount, you know, I had maybe five, six people that I could rely on consistently, that would kind of be my eyes and ears, and I would just trust that process it, yeah, you know, you can't scale this Fast and micromanage everybody like it's impossible you will, you'll drown like you won't be sleeping, like it's gonna be, you know, it's gonna be a process, just like, basically pain, continuous pain, for you. But, yeah, definitely, I, I think the experience and the leader, like local leaders, was, was the biggest thing they really without either of them, yeah, it would be a struggle. And then also just asking for help when I needed it, being able to set aside your pride and saying, Hey, what this is a little much right now, like, is there kind of some temporary relief that I could get from, you know, either my respective leaders or other other leaders in the group?
Aaron Moncur:I think that's huge, being able to ask for help. I did a series just recently. I guess technically it's still, it hasn't concluded, but we've been doing a series focused on the question of how to accelerate the speed of engineering. The whole episodes have been about those, and one of the items that has come up a lot is engineers not asking for help soon enough, just continually struggling, trying to solve a problem themselves, which is understandable, because a that's what engineers like doing is solving problems. And B like you said, it can feel a little uncomfortable to ask for help, right? Maybe think to yourself, oh, I'm I'm not doing something right. If I need to ask for help, I shouldn't need to ask for help. I should be able to figure this out when that's not the case at all. In my opinion, no one knows how to do everything, especially if you're in a new environment. So I think being able to ask for help is a huge asset.
Geoff Gaw:Yeah, yeah. 100% Totally agree. Well,
Aaron Moncur:you've worked quite a bit in both product development and process development. And when I say process development, I'm largely referring to manufacturing, what at what point in the product development process do you start thinking about about process and like kind of, how do you align those two phases of a program, or the people working in those two areas of the program? Him,
Unknown:yeah, yeah. So there's, you know, definitely more than one way to achieve success, and kind of like this question, but from my experience and like this, my answer to this, if I were being asked, like every two years, would probably change based on the experience and the exposure that I've had the opportunity of having thus far. But as of today, like my my the way I view this is in the early phase of product development, you're not thinking about repeatability or reproducibility of that process. You're thinking about the capability of achieving said function or dimension, because you're just trying to get a product that will work and have some success, and it's basically clinical target. Now the I think, to answer your question of like, you know, when do you start thinking about the process? Well, I now understand why, nine times out of 10 you don't really think about the process until you have a successful product, right? Like, until you have objective evidence that, hey, this product is gonna be viable, and that's that, that is where my answer would be. Now, the caveat to that is, like, I think the word alignment in your question, right? It's more like alignment with with leadership. That's like the biggest thing, because to them, once they see a successful product, they see the finish line. They don't really see all of the obstacles that that currently exist to get to that finish line, and that will you know that will basically define how well is your process going to be.
Aaron Moncur:So leadership might see a beyond just a functional prototype. Maybe you've gone into clinical trials with something so it's, it's pretty matured from from a design standpoint, I guess. And they might see this device working well, it's being successful. It's getting good, good reviews. And they might think, great, we're done. We're ready to go into production. But, but really, there's just, like, what could be, and maybe at times, should be an extensive process of design for manufacturability, right, figuring out, all right, how do we make this cheap, reliable, high quality to manufacture now,
Unknown:yeah, yeah. And I think yeah, in that instance, it's like very critical to have the right people assess what is capable in a year span, what is capable of, you know, what a success look like in two years? Right? Because you're going to have varying different answers. You know? I've seen, have seen programs, I've seen acquisitions kind of set unreal, like, yeah, unrealistic expectation, you know, at the higher level, whereas, like, the people on the ground level understand, like, hey, this product is like two years out for being even reasonably feasible for commercial, Right? So, yeah, I think definitely that that's the key, key factor. But hey, if you just honestly have just teams of engineers working on things, I mean, I think you'll have more success in the long run, but you know, maybe you won't, you won't get the business out there in time, kind of like a brown game.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, right. We don't just have all the time and money in the world to deliver a perfect product or business constraints that we need to be cognizant of Exactly, yeah, yeah. So in you mentioned that in the early stages of r, d, you're not thinking about process that much. At what point? What's the trigger for you to where you start thinking, Okay, now we need to really think about process and DFM and those sorts of things. Yeah.
Geoff Gaw:I mean, for me, the biggest trigger is like seeing that confidence in in the products objective data at like, like you said, you know, if you go to clinical trials, and we already started to get signals of, hey, this product is doing well. You, you know, you people, some people have been in the industry long enough to kind of see the on ramp starting to. Develop, and that's really like, Yeah, that's really when a team should be focused on, like, you know, it might, it might be work that you know becomes nothing because you're, you're taking the risk of the parallel, parallel activities, but you're also kind of getting ahead of, like, leadership expectations, right? Because once, yeah, the formal trials are completed, and you have your result and you know it is as was predicted, then you're just sprinting from that point. So I would say, yeah, getting signal, getting early signals that your product is going to be viable and and successful that that's where you want to start exploring different avenues of manufacturability.
Aaron Moncur:Nice, terrific. All right, well, I'm going to take a short break here and share with the listeners that sometimes people think that Aaron is a podcast host, and that's what he does, which is not the case. My day job is president at Pipeline design and engineering, where we don't design pipelines, but we do help companies develop advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R D services. You can learn more at Team pipeline.us The podcast is also sponsored by the wave, an online platform of free tools, education and community for engineers learn more at the wave. Dot engineer, and today, we are thrilled to be speaking with Geoff Gaw, so Jeff, can you talk maybe about some of the key differences in your approach to developing early phase medical devices versus taking them into mass production? We kind of hit on it a little bit already, but if you could expound on that a little bit, what are the key differences in going into mass production versus the early stage R and D efforts,
Geoff Gaw:I would say early phase is a lot of experimenting different approaches that have never been done before, or maybe you think have never been done before, because it's not a popular attempt at a solution. Actually, what I would say is like, I guess, in my current role, I from my own perspective, and just my perspective, have been amazed at, like, the ideas that have come through the pipeline, and the success at our team's capabilities of producing said design like, you know, I, I, yeah, it's just unheard of, at least from my perspective, For a company of this size to have that capability, because that's more, you know, you almost think it's like more of like a startup vibe, a little bit, right? Like,
Aaron Moncur:Well, yeah, that's great. But yeah,
Geoff Gaw:You know, I think what I've seen is we do a lot of experimenting different approaches of how to achieve certain clinical targets and and honestly, we're not afraid to iterate and spend the time kind of failing fast and moving on to the next thing and realizing, all right, that didn't work, but maybe we could change something about the design to make it work and well, you know, what will that be like? What would, what would that present from a functional, clinical outcome? You know, it's a lot of, it's a lot like a big sandbox, right? Just playing. You're playing until something sticks.
Aaron Moncur:I also love the R and D phase of projects, where you're you're inventing something, you're figuring out something brand new, you're exploring, you're experimenting. That's all always where I've enjoyed that phase the most, as opposed to, like, maybe a sustaining role, where you know, maybe you're making incremental improvements to a project or things like that.
Unknown:Yeah, I think so. Now, I guess going back to the second part of your question, you know, like, what are the approaches like? How are they different for, like, mass production? You know, design for mass production, well, the fact that you're not in the sandbox, like the fact that you you have all these outputs that are now defined, then you're more so kind of researching and looking at, you know, what's out there in the industry to perform high speed Inspections. Or achieve certain tolerances, or basically outputs that would be cost effective. It's more mass production. Everything is defined like, I guess that's the best way to differentiate the two right. One is more you have like a general goal, but you're given like different approaches of how to achieve that goal. With mass production, you have a very nice wall out thought out plan. And you know, there's already different approaches out there, and you kind of just have to select the ones that makes the most sense and that fits your requirement. It's still fun for me, at least I enjoy, I enjoy, like, you know, figuring out a solution that improves throughput by like, 200% I enjoy being able to kind of present that value. It's a different value you're presenting. And I think everybody kind of, I honestly think, like both, both sides of development is, like, has, you know, their art to it in a way, like inventing something, yeah, not taking that invention and mass producing it like that's also different, you know, you like a different artist, right? Going from like a sculptor to a painter to something else. So I, I've always appreciated both ends, so
Aaron Moncur:that that's a good point there, that they're almost different skill sets. Well, I think they are different skill sets. In your experience. Has it been different teams who have focused on the r, d versus the transfer to production side? Or has it often, often been the same team that takes it all the way through?
Unknown:Yeah, you know, this is, like, I would say, like, a very common argument feedback that everybody has, like, you know, you meet you meet engineers that just, yeah, you know what I want to I just want to be R D rest of my life. That's all I want to do. Then you meet engineers that want to do everything they want to do. They want to invent the product. They want to mass produce it. They want to figure out, like, they want to basically problem solve throughout the whole cradle to grave aspect of the product, at least even in the medical industry.
Aaron Moncur:Have you seen the same teams go all the way from R D through production? Or have you typically seen like one team focusing on the r, d, and then maybe another team comes in to transfer to production, to the DFM, all that. Yeah,
Unknown:I've seen, I've seen it done both ways. I've seen okay, I've seen it be the same group of people from start to finish, and I've seen it where, you know, you have different groups of people that kind of just hand them. It's like handing the baton off right for the marathon? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think both approaches can work. It just depends on the team. You know, you got to have the right people at the right time, and they all have their pros and cons. Like, to me, it would be equal. My personal preference is, I like being cradle to grave, like I like being at the beginning all the way through the end, because it just helps me understand what the importance of everything is from, from their designs, right? Like, the core reasons for these dimensions, versus, like, having to try to figure out, like, why did it mention it this way? Why did they put an arm there where I would have put arm, you know? Why did they put a feature like it just helped for me, just kind of see the whole picture. I enjoyed that aspect.
Aaron Moncur:I think you you hit the nail on the head there. If you can, you have to find the right person, because not everyone thrives in that cradle to grave environment. But if you find the right people being able to have the same tea and take it from R and D through production, doing all the tooling and helping scale things up, maintain high quality, the continuity throughout that process is so important. I mean, the less you have to transfer knowledge from one person's brain to another person's brain, the better your program will be because of it. So if you can find the right people who thrive in that cradle to grave environment, then all the better.
Unknown:Yeah, yeah. And that's like a key thing Nikki said, you know, it's the transfer of knowledge doesn't always get transferred and you're right, yeah? Time right because you're now it's like you have other group that's just like reinventing the wheel, trying to figure out why things happen for the reason that they have. Yeah? So yeah, yeah.
Aaron Moncur:That's a thing that's a big area where you. I won't say teams falter, but it's, it's a major factor in why projects slow down or falter. Sometime.
Geoff Gaw:yeah, man, too many times,
Aaron Moncur:I can tell you're speaking from experience there. Yeah, definitely. Well, what? What are some ways that you have found to stay up to date with, you know, emerging trends, new manufacturing technologies, especially within medical devices. But you know, it can be outside of medical devices as well.
Unknown:Yeah, from my experience, I've just I've always just been very like I've dealt so deep into my roles and like the places I work for that I honestly continue to find different technologies or products or different problems, like within my day to day, that it almost seems me like too busy to have the bandwidth to explore different just opportunities. My first day at Applied they were big on vertical integration. So I mean, unless I've touched every process there, it's like there's always all these new things that I'm learning, you know, from packaging all the way to, like, finished good product assembly. So I guess I've been lucky in that sense, and and when I've moved career, like company, like that alone, you know, it's just you have a whole new horizon to kind of explore. Yeah, of the Medtronic they had, I mean, at the time, I think they had like, 20 business units, you know, I remember interviewing for their roles, and it was, like, almost impossible for me to figure out which department was which, you know, like, how can I get a How can I get a leg up with against the people I'm interviewing against, with, with, like, finding product knowledge. I can't, because it's like, the website was so convoluted I couldn't find anything. But I would say, yeah, now, you know, I just been lucky. There's, there's definitely a lot, and even now, like, you know, talking about advancement material science, like I've never worked with night and all, and just realizing the, you know, almost like, significant amount of applications for the material, and that has just been fun.
Aaron Moncur:I think that's a really insightful answer. I mean, you hear kind of typical answers like, oh, I go to trade shows or just searching on Google or whatever, but changing companies is one I don't think I've heard before, and that's a really good one, because there are all kinds of new processes, new technologies, new ways of doing things that just inherently are different, one company to the next.
Unknown:Yeah, yeah. I mean changing. I mean, imagine if you change the industry, right? Like that is, yeah, it's a different kind of world everybody's got, yeah, and goes, and it's like a whole new, you know, it's a whole new thing. But yeah, you know, I've just kind of kept my head in, in the day to day, and it's given me these opportunities. So it's been fun. Sorry for anybody out there that, yes, we're looking for something different.
Aaron Moncur:That's great. All right. Well, looking ahead, the next, I don't know, five to 10 years or so what? What do you think the industry is heading the medical device industry specifically, since that's where the bulk of your experience is, what do you see happening in the next five to 10 years?
Unknown:Yeah, it's like the things or the technologies that I've seen I've never expected to see, but they exist. Yeah, yeah. I think the easiest answer that probably most people would would be able to find right now is just how, how would you integrate AI, right, to, yeah, to the opportunities of certain types of procedures. You know, I think that, in a way, is probably the next stage. I've heard it. You know, different companies, co workers, vision, not like, not to the point where it's like, taking over, but it's definitely a topic that exists. It's coming. It's coming. Yeah, it's coming. So there's. There's that opportunity. I mean, I guess, from my perspective, it's kind of like a double edged sword, right? Because it's like, there's so much power to this type of technology, but then there's also like, could there be that much risk on the other side? Right? Right?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, we have a lot less control once AI steps in, right? We don't really know what's going on under the hood. Yeah,
Geoff Gaw:yeah, unless you're the guy that made the AI, right?
Aaron Moncur:Even then I feel like the complexities of true AI, I was talking with a technologist. What's his name? Kevin? Can't remember his last name, but he was, he was telling me how, in in a medical application, it was like screening for cancer or something like that. They would feed, like X rays into an AI and teach it like which which patients had cancer and which ones didn't. And it got to the point where the AI could predict which ones had cancer, even sometimes when doctors couldn't look at the the X ray of the scan, whatever the data was, I don't even know if it was an x ray, some kind of data, the doctors couldn't even predict it, but the AI could predict it, and the AI didn't have, it didn't have the the vocabulary to explain to the doctors why it knew that there was cancer in that patient. Because the the the methodologies, or the processes by which the AI work are that there aren't necessarily words for it. It's like this brand new things. I thought that was really interesting, like the AI didn't have the words to explain how it knew what it knew
Unknown:that that is interesting. Aside from, like, my experience with like, you know, Google or like, chat GBT, I have yet to experience like, what, what, what you just said, like, true, AI, you know, like an actual computing being that is, like, free of commands, right? Because, like, even, like, when you do, you know, chat, GPT school, it's like a more advanced search, search, Google search, you know, in a way, yeah right, but I'm still promoting boundary conditions. I'm not, you know, it's not like, yeah, off on its own, just like coming at me with good conversation. Yeah, right, right,
Aaron Moncur:yeah, yeah. Well, let me, let me give you one more question, and then we'll, we'll wrap things up here. What? What's one thing that you have seen or done to accelerate the speed of engineering, you know, to reduce the amount of time required to complete a project or to advance a project more quickly than maybe it would have otherwise. Yeah.
Unknown:So I would say, you know, people that are leaders of programs or projects like they, you know, part of, I would think, part of their main responsibility is to almost like, foresee the roadblocks and most of these roadblocks, but my experience has been like, bureaucratic. It's a lot of, you know, red tape that you kind of just need to get ahead of it. You know, whether it's like, some examples are like, this manufacturing plant has a different set of SOPs that, you know, this other plant is used to, but you have to somehow integrate and work together. Like getting ahead of that is big. It's not fun because that kind of resolution is more, yeah, I would say kind of like red tape. You're trying to figure out what works between both plants. It's not really, I would say like a technical challenge, more like people development, I guess, you know people skill thing, yeah. But doing that and letting the team, the engineering team do the technical work. I think that, in my opinion, how you speed up programs like to keep them out of this, back and forth, all these people related problem solving that most engineering teams don't want to do. Yeah, that's really my opinion, where you could be the most effective as a either a people leader or a program manager,
Aaron Moncur:yeah, removing those obstacles, the politics, the bureaucracies, and just allowing them to focus on the technical work, the engineering Yeah, definitely. That's great. Yeah, great. All right. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for being on this. Show today. How can people get in touch with you?
Geoff Gaw:Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn.
Aaron Moncur:We'll put a link to to your profile.
Unknown:There you go. Perfect. Yeah, okay,
Aaron Moncur:well, great, Geoff, thank you so much again for being on the show today.
Geoff Gaw:Yeah, I appreciate your time, and thanks for having me.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode to learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R D services. Visit us at Team pipeline.us to join a vibrant community of engineers online visit the wave. Dot, engineer,
Unknown:thank you for listening.
