Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S7E6 Bob Hankins | Medical Device Engineering Leadership & Working With the FDA
Bob Hankins brings over 20 years of dedicated experience in the medical-device industry, spanning engineering leadership, product development, process improvement and strategic technical oversight. As Director of Engineering at TE Connectivity, he leads a global team of engineers and scientists focused on designing, developing and delivering innovative customer-centric medical device solutions—particularly complex machined, extruded and laser-cut components. In this role he ensures design for manufacturing and quality within ISO 13485-compliant systems, marrying deep technical understanding with regulatory-driven manufacturing discipline.
Before his current role Bob led Research & Product Development Engineering at Nordson Medical and has held key leadership positions at several medical-device companies, including overseeing product development platforms, multi-site engineering operations, manufacturing automation and system launches. Throughout his career he has honed core competencies in manufacturing process improvement, continuous improvement (including Six Sigma/Lean methodologies), design for manufacturing/assembly, regulatory compliance (ISO 13485, ISO 14971, FDA), and product R&D for the health-care market.
Bob’s academic background includes a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Irvine, and an Executive MBA from the Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University. This combination of technical and business education supports his ability to lead engineering organizations in bridging innovation with operational execution, customer development and quality.
In this episode we’ll dive into how Bob thinks about leading engineering teams in the regulated medical-device space, how he drives design and process improvements globally, how he balances innovation with manufacturing rigor, and what advice he has for engineers growing into leadership roles in healthcare technology. We’ll also explore his views on what the next wave of medical-device manufacturing and design looks like—and how engineering leaders can foster a culture of excellence, empowerment and impact.
LINKS:
Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rthankins/
Guest website: https://www.te.com/en/home.html
Aaron Moncur, host
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From the OEM experiences, and working with that and growing, growing that business, you really work to appreciate the it's not just documentation for documentation sake. There are. There's value for doing a, P, F M E, A, using doing the D, F M E, A, really understanding what the mitigations are, what your single points of failures are. And just like in project management, you got to look for your plan A, plan B, plan C. You have to account for that in in in your design process.
Aaron Moncur:Hello, and welcome to another exciting episode of The being an engineer podcast today, we are joined by Bob Hankins, a seasoned engineering leader in the medical device industry with more than two decades of experience and currently director of engineered component development AT TE Connectivity in the medical device space, Bob leads global teams designing machined, extruded and laser cut components under ISO 1345, systems. Prior to this role, he directed research and product development at Nordson medical and holds an executive MBA along with a Bachelor in mechanical engineering. His work sits at the intersection of R and D manufacturing process improvement and bringing life changing healthcare products to market. Bob, thank you so much for being with us today.
Bob Hankins:Yeah, thanks for having me. Aaron.
Aaron Moncur:Well, how did you decide to become an engineer?
Bob Hankins:You know, I was good. I was always interested in taking apart little radio remote control cars when I was a kid. And never really went into the biosciences, or, you know, anything mechanical. My father was an engineer as well, worked for Clorox, and so had that experience, seeing what he had done, hearing all his stories, and really interested in solving problems mechanically. So I went to mechanical engineering school and and enjoyed that experience.
Aaron Moncur:Do you recall any stories in particular from your father that really made you think, Wow, that sounds fun. I'd like to do that.
Bob Hankins:You know, working with chlorine. He was setting up a lot of the automatic bottling systems. So and they're expanding. Chloroxton is growing pretty, pretty quickly. You know, he during college, he was sweeping the production floor in Florida at one of the factories, one of the plants. But since then, throughout his career, they expanded globally. So his trips you know, learning about the different safety regulations, different requirements, building codes, different cultures across the world. In order to set up a bottling station with with the safety right, you can't have the fire department come in if there's gas, leak chlorine and spray spray water where the hoses making hydrochloric acid. So he made he made it sound interesting, and he met a lot of people, got to travel a lot and and really was providing a unique solution to a lot of people's problems. It sounds like he was a great engineer and a great salesperson. Yeah, that's right.
Aaron Moncur:Well, you spent decades now in the medical device industry. You're leading a global team at TE Connectivity. Can you tell us a little bit about, first of all, who is TE Connectivity and what are some of the lessons that you've learned, particularly about scaling engineering operations in a regulated space.
Bob Hankins:Yeah. T connectivity is a company that is a global company about 78,000 people, and they have a very big presence, tier one supplier for a lot of different industries, airspace and marine and defense and and as well as with the AI computers and networking appliances. And they decided to continue their diversification. And they got they bought into medicals. They bought different companies, you know, for the endovascular market to vertically as to vertically integrate catheter assemblies, catheter design, implant delivery systems for the endovascular market. So a lot of the structural heart repairs, a lot of structural heart and electrophysio therapies that are being delivered into vascularity. Need you know they've done a good job of building that that capability up through acquisitions and and buying into that. So they're definitely in a growth mode for TE Connectivity. They've got a lot of capability, a lot of different areas, and I'm happy to be a part of it.
Aaron Moncur:Fantastic. Yeah, so medical devices are, for sure, regulated environments that you can't run fast and loose like the Wild West. In that kind of environment. What kind of challenges have you encountered, and what are some of the lessons that you've learned about scaling teams within such an environment?
Bob Hankins:Yeah, it's, it's, you know, I always have a bias for people who come from the regulated industries, coming into medical coming into our teams, but really appreciate outside experiences from other people have from different industries. But I had a long run at a startup company doing ventilators on the OEM side, so manufacturing them, and that's where we as a startup company. We had some quality issues. We you know, we want to make sure we took care of the product. We had some recalls that we had done in our early days. And when you're one product company doing life support systems and working with the FDA, having recalls. And you know, you live in paycheck by paycheck. In some cases, you learn to, you know, to do it right fast. You get to figure it out. Yeah, no pressure at all. So, yeah, yeah, from the OEM experiences, and working with that and growing, growing that business, you really work to appreciate the it's not just documentation for documentation sake. There are. There's value for doing a PFMEA, using doing the dfmea, really understanding what your mitigations are, what your single point of failures are. And just like in project management, you got to look for your plan A, plan B, plan C. You have to account for that in in your design process and stepping through the documentation, stepping through the regulations, it can be a burden. It can't be too much, but if you stick with the ISO 14, 971, risk based approach. It can be a very useful tool for you. It's not something to be afraid of. This gets down into the details a bit. But can you think of a story where you and your team did an FMEA and it was particularly useful? Maybe you identified something that you hadn't thought of before, and you were able to circumvent or avoid what could have been a disaster. With that. We had a turbine, a compressor for a ventilator that we had built, and it was a drag compressor, and the bearings were very problematic if they're out of balance if they have too much loading on them. Really understanding that approach, I think, you know, we had some early quality issues that goes back to some of the recalls I talked about. And I think we really went back into the understand their mitigations, do the root cause analysis, build beef up that FMEA, as far as the preloading was the key for for really maintaining that inner bore, maintain that spring on the on the bearings, to keep the seals, to keep the lubrication and to keep the consistency of it. So we we did a lot to mitigate those issues, really understanding science with the bearings and how we applied it into the overall compressor, and that that really saved us. In the end, that's a great lesson. I've done a little bit of work with with bearings and rotating shafts and by preload, I think what you're referring to is the the axial compression on the inner race of the two opposing bearings, on the outer faces of those two opposing bearings, is that, right, right? And I think the life is a function of, you know, the cube, do cube of the denominator. So it really has a big impact on the overall life with that, preload that you have. I didn't realize it was that significant.
Aaron Moncur:A lot of engineering teams, including myself, at one point, we just stick a shaft in there and let it spin without any kind of preload. But that's that's an important factor, and it makes a difference on handling of the bearing. You know, you can damage it during assembly. So working with your operators, working to pokyo as much as you can on fixed strings, you're not, you know, somebody wants to tap it with a hammer and didn't already get it fed in there, they're doing a lot more damage than you expect. Well, fixed string now you're now you're speaking my love language, Bob, I love it. Okay. Well, you, at some point, took on the role of interim CTO. Is that a still a role that you hold?
Bob Hankins:No it's still within that organization, still within CTO organization. We've reorg. You know, big companies like to reorganize. We reorganized a couple times since then, but really learned to appreciate that, that opportunity, that role, and honestly, the I've worked in companies that have been smaller and haven't had that role before. So it was, it was eye opening to see how it was applied in other divisions and other business units and make it work for medical
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah, I imagine that there was a mindset shift from executing engineering projects to strategic technical leadership when you assumed that role. Were there any lessons in particular that you learned, or, you know, just details about the mindset shift that you can share.
Bob Hankins:Yeah, I think it was, it was twofold. One is that it was a bigger role in a different scale, as far as managing people, managing an organization, right? You can't have one on ones with everybody in the organization and then be able to have the organization lift up and be successful and manage itself. You really have to think, think bigger about setting the structure and, more importantly, setting up a culture, right? You know, how do you want engineers to and that team, the development team, to really go about the work. We don't want them to stop and ask from permission, but we want them to understand the guide rails and and the rules and and when to raise their hand for help, and when to leverage help and not not be pinned, to be, not penalize them for taking risk and for, you know, making choices, but at the same time you want To have mitigation so it doesn't cause any problems long term. So you have to let people have to serve an organization a culture. We let people fail. You let them succeed. You give them guide rails, and then get out of the way so they can be successful. The other aspect is you have to think about the strategy long term. So what is the three year, five year, what technologies you have to work with? You know, AI is big now. What does that look like? Three to five years? How are you going to use that? And what steps you have to take on the intermediate time systems, you have to implement, software, you have to look at and services, you have to select to be your gold standard that you want to move the whole organization over to so they can you can give the engineers tools to really streamline the overall process and provide service to the customers.
Aaron Moncur:Speaking about the balance between moving fast and fast and risk mitigation, what are some of the guardrails that you and your team were able to put up that allowed engineers to still move fast and not penalize them for, you know, if there was a mistake that was made because they are moving fast yet, yet, still have some safety checks in place?
Bob Hankins:Yeah, I think, I think you really, you know, from the engineering perspective, you really have to go through the process and understand the variables and understand the probability of each you know. As you do a hazard analysis or root cause analysis, really understand what are your key factors that you have to control, and maybe do a doe and make sure you have the right, right steps in place to control that you can't you spend a lot of time on a PFMEA or root cause analysis, and go down to the nth degree, but at some point you have to say, what's the probability of this occurring? What's the has the biggest probability? What has the biggest impact to the functionality of it? And really prioritize implementation of those based on the risk, based on the probability, and the same approaches for what people are working on. It's prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. In order to go fast, you can't be distracted by, you know, sub task and wanting to help people out. In some cases, you really have to stay focused on what the key one or two things are, especially if you're on the critical path, yeah, yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Speaking of critical path and advancing progress within the medical device industry, specifically, what are one or two common pitfalls that that you see when teams are trying to bring up a new product from, from ideation, through through launch, and any strategies you can share on on how you've tried to mitigate those pitfalls.
Bob Hankins:Yeah, the development pad, because you are building equipment that's been used to help people get better and affect people's lives really directly, you really have to understand the regulatory requirements, the safety requirements and the hazard analysis that you're going through the pfma I talked about. Really understand that risk based profile, the development path to do your validation, do your clinical studies. Do you do? Do the design verification testing? One and do life cycle testing, etc. And so really understanding how it's different from a spaceship or automotive, car or other other industries, and what are the regulatory requirements, not only for the US, European Union had different requirements. Japan, FDA has requirements. Chinese FDA has different requirements, so you really have to understand what the deliverables are, what guidelines you have to play in and still develop a project. You know that it's really tough to get new technology because it is a risk averse industry to be the bleeding edge, but it's not too far behind if you take the right steps and and you spend more time to make sure you understand what the risks are, because you certainly don't want to launch a product and have an issue or have a recall or have other issues that impact people's lives. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:so currently you are director of engineered component development. Is that right? That's right. Okay, you spoke about prioritizing just now for the listeners out there right now who are thinking to themselves, I I am motivated to go into leadership. I think that's the path for me. I want to end up in some kind of director or leadership role. There are probably many different attributes or behaviors or skill sets that you can advise they develop. How would you prioritize? You know, if you had to pick the maybe top one or two, mindsets, behaviors, skill sets to prioritize in order to facilitate a path into leadership. What would those be? If you want to connect with other engineers beyond the podcast, you can join the wave, our online engineering community. It's a place for engineers to actively learn, share ideas and engage with people doing similar work. That's the wave. Dot engineer. Thank you.
Bob Hankins:Well, you know, I know people often jump to a conclusion, saying, look, if I want to advance my path, have to advance on the managerial level, and that's the path I've taken. I feel like I've got better skills as a manager than maybe as individual contributor, but just as important, and I've seen different organizations, you know, take, you know, treat them the same. There's a technical path as far as principal and fellow and and and really advance the technology and the science of that. So I think that's a viable path for a lot of engineers. But, you know, I did get my MBA, I did get my PMO, PMP certification project, manage a lot of different projects help develop a system engineering team. So really, you know, be able to, I wasn't able to go technically deep in a lot of the different areas, but I was able to go technically broad in order to develop my experience. So I understood what engineers what their pain points are. You know, what pain point for me was always documentation. How do I get this signed off by quality? How do I get this signed off by regulatory How do I get it signed off by the customer? You know, what do I need to do to understand what their needs are and their solutions so that I do all this work, and I get to the end and they say, No, I don't like it, or, or, or you forgot this. You forgot that. So really being a collaborative really understanding the work that's being done and implementing systems and practices that prevent that having to redo all that work because an engineer wants to be valuable. They want to work on valuable things that make a difference. They don't want to work on a lot of things that waste a lot of time it has to be redone. So if you understand that aspect of it as a manager, then you can be a good players coach for the engineers that you're working on and really, you know, build their confidence and their capability, but, you know, let them know it's okay to fail. But we want you to try things with the guide rails and really build, you know, be personable to level. You understand what they're working on. You understand what their pain points are, and then you can work with them to identify a development path to further their career a little bit. Yeah, wonderful. I love the advice about going technically, broad, if not necessarily deep, in all the different areas. Okay?
Aaron Moncur:I've never heard the title before, Director of engineered component development. Can you talk a little bit about what your responsibilities are there? Yeah. You know, our company and other companies are structured differently or similarly. As far as.
Bob Hankins:As the, you know, the different technologies and capabilities we because we have a lot of capabilities and machining, a lot of capabilities of wire assemblies and wire pull wires and and hypotubes, we've split up the components into the machine component, into the base level, the individual components, whether it's laser cut hypertubes or wire full wires, injection molded, heat shrink. So we have the polymers group balloons as well, and then the assemblies that those go into tea also has the capability to build full catheters that include a lot of those components into an assembly, into a device that can help with the implant. So a lot of those devices are accessories to our OEM customers. They're interested in getting a therapy deployed to a region within the body, and we help them get that therapy to that that region, whether it's the heart, whether it's the brain, whether it's peripheral side. So we're the components that goes into the assemblies and the sub assemblies. So that's how we split up our division got it. Okay, that's clear. Thank you. All right, well, let me take a very short break here and share with everyone that the being an engineer podcast is brought to you by 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 and D services. You can learn more at Team pipeline.us.
Aaron Moncur:The podcast is also sponsored by the wave, an online platform of free tools, education and community for engineers. Visit the wave. Dot engineer to learn more. And today we're speaking with Bob Hankins, Bob what, what are some of the at your level, Director, leadership level, what are some of the challenges, the problems that that you encounter at work?
Bob Hankins:You know, I think a lot of it goes down the miscommunication people, you know, in absence of information, people make assumptions about what the problem is or what's causing the issue. We've got an engineering problem. We've got a design problem is not working in assembly and production. They're not able to build it. So I think it just drills down to understanding how we got to where we are. You know, what were the design, design considerations? How was it put together? You know, I like going into Home Depot and finding out new, new designs for the smallest little thing, whether a little hook or a little feature or a new car. You know, what does this button do that type of thing? Do you have the same thing with a lot of the devices and parts that we build? And really have to understand that. So you have to caution about what you change and what you think is the problem. And really have to go through a standardized root cause analysis, a doe to verify what you think the variables are, and then communicate that, you know, I think, I think the missing link in a lot of areas is communicating technicals and non technical people who have different responsibilities and finance and sales and product management, you know, quality and lot of different roles, but, you know, it's our job as engineers, really, you know, make sure that we send the message that delivers what needs to be done for the business. So I think the communication is key, and the more we understand it, the more we can lay it out for them that it helps the business make the right decisions about what to do with the product and what to do with the business I think understanding business needs is a hole in many engineers skill sets, at least, that's what I've found. To what degree do you find that to be true in your own work? And is there anything you've done in particular to help your engineers not just think about, I'm designing this widget in CAD and it needs to function correctly. But, you know, asking several Whys beyond that. Why am I designing this? Well, why is it important to the business? What impact will it have in the business, that sort of thing? Yeah, you know, I decided to go get my MBA at Claremont Colleges graduate school. And believe it or not, Peter Drucker was one of my instructors at the time. Amazing. He was 93 or 92 and he'd sit in the, sit in a chair, and wow, and just lecture to the to the team. So his his response, you know, he'd say, you know, you're worried about this new technology. You're worried about, why to K, worried about issues, but people worried about telegraph. They were worried about trains, railway, and so it really kind of reset expectation. People worried about AI. But if you learn how to use it, you're not afraid of it. You expand to understand it. And. And build a life of curiosity, you can really gain some more tools and become more effective as you go through so your career and so it's really understanding you know that what a knowledge worker is, you're paid to thank you're paid to execute, and that means asking a lot of questions from the business perspective, understanding what you're working on and why it's important to the patient, why it's important to the business, why it's important to strategy that you're trying to implement, and connect those dots. So I do several cases I have in managers or engineers who get really frustrated because the world isn't doing the right thing right so, you know, the business isn't doing the right thing. And often I reference, or I'll send them to a negotiation class, I think in my MBA class, do the research, understanding what the end goal is, understanding what you're trying to accomplish with information and the negotiations you're having. You negotiate with your wife, your kids, your dog, everything. It's a piece of life, but you really have to do your research, understanding what that audience needs to hear and needs to understand, and then present your case so that it gets you to the end result, at the result. So I think, I think there's got to be an appreciation for not everybody understands science, not everybody understands numbers, but you've got to find a different way to communicate that so you can get the end result you need. Yeah, I like your suggestion of taking a negotiation course. There are a few I've taken. There's the Charis Institute, and then there's a, I can't remember his last name, Chris, something. He was a hostage negotiator for the FBI, and he's got a master class out there, and at least one book. He's got some really great content, any negotiation books or courses or seminars in particular that you recommend. You know, we found different ones over the years. But, you know, I really enjoyed a four or five day session, you know, outside of work, where you can with other people, cross functionally, across different industries. And you you do some role playing. You understand the basics, the whole win win. But it really teaches you how to go through the steps and different strategies you can use, and then by the end, it becomes, excuse my dog, if you can hear it in the background, but fine, but it really helps to understand the perspective and what you're working on and importance and how you can relate it To make a difference in business. Yeah, yep, definitely.
Aaron Moncur:In your LinkedIn bio, you talk about creating a culture of empowerment for your engineers. Are there any specific like rituals or practices that you've implemented to facilitate that?
Bob Hankins:Yeah, you know, I don't, I don't, you know, trying to minimize the engineers spending time putting presentations together, you know, I do want them to communicate, you know, what they know, and tell how they got to that, to just decision, to tell a story and help us make the right decision. But at the same time, you know, I'm. I don't want to go in and dictate a lot. I don't like to get on my soapbox and say, This is how you should do it, you know. I don't enjoy that directive manager role. I rather query everybody in the meeting and find out what their opinion is, and then gets us, you know. And I don't like consensus building either. You know, it doesn't get you always the right answer as well. But really challenge ideas, really ask questions, get people to think and understand a thought process that you're going through. And once you get that, okay, I see where Bob's going. I understand what he's looking for. I can start predicting what, what's next, and once, once you take over, instead of just answering the questions, and say, okay, and this answer leads to this question. That leads to this answer leads this question. Great. You're on your way. I'm done. I can go somewhere, work on another project, work on another phone call or meeting. But I you know, the more people can feel that they are able to take ownership of it. And we're gonna, you know, wanted to get there, you know, logically, and have a follower process and can explain it and communicate it well. It's defendable. We're gonna, we're gonna support that. You can't just do what other people tell you to do. We're paying you to think, and we're paying you to take ownership of it, and you're someone who can solve a lot of problems if we just get out of your way and do that. So that's that's kind of the empowering that we like to do. Yeah, terrific.
Aaron Moncur:Can you think of a project in your career that. That you're particularly proud of, and what engineering or leadership lesson or principle did you learn that you still feel guided by to this day?
Unknown:That's a good question.
Bob Hankins:You know, in that OEM company working it was a startup ventilator company, and we did go through a lot of problems with that. And had that, you know, I had 100 hours plus of sitting in front of the FDA saying, trying to explain, did you go through your process? Do you go through the validation? Did you go through and the nice thing about a ventilator, the cool thing is that it's electromechanical device is software driven. So you're dealing with electronics, you're dealing with pneumatics, you're dealing with turbines. You know, a lot of different aspects, and think it's just an appreciation of the overall system and how they interact together. And you can say, Okay, I fixed this problem on the mechanical side or on the electrical side. It's somebody else's problem. But if you don't get the electrical mechanical engineer together, look at a power board to find out what's what's going on with that, as well as software. Right? Electrical engineers and software engineers always point the finger at each other. It's not hardware, it's software. The same thing with mechanical and one of the systems. So you really have to understand the whole system approach the what, what your what your expertise is impacting across the system, and why, where those undefined requirements are. There's always undefined requirements. You can never really specify. You know too much, but you can never specify enough in a lot of cases to capture everything. But the more you can learn about what what that system is, and what that component is, and how it's being used in the upper level assembly, then the more you can say maybe I should do it this way instead of a different way, because I'm really worried about how it's going to impact the performance in the system when you put it together. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:you talked about spending 100 hours in front of the FDA. That sounds like it could be a harrowing experience. Are there any lessons you've learned about dealing with the FDA? Of course, medical devices being within a regulated environment, regulated by the FDA, any lessons that you've learned that you can pass on
Bob Hankins:at the startup company. As a young engineer, I would have to go to CEO or general manager and tell him, we have a problem that we need to fix, and we just shipped a bunch of units out, they have that same problem. And I would, I would have a physical panic attack where I'd have to, you know, lean up against the file cabinets and take some breath and because, you know, it's a big deal. But our president was fantastic. Our founder was fantastic, and he said he was an engineer who got pushed into the leadership role. His partner had died and on the marketing side, and he really had to expand his breadth and knowledge, but he was always an engineer, always a very good engineer, and he long as you came to him with the argument, you put the proposal together. You walk through the steps. You walk through what you did, you walk through what you know, the facts, minimizing the opinion as much as you can. You want to be objective until that take out that personal editorial as much as you can. And he's like, Yeah, that's right, you're fine, right decision. Let's do a recall, and they go to call the regulatory guy and get it done. So I think what you understand that, you know have have confidence in the tools. And if you take care of the product, this product takes care of you, right? It'll take care of your company. Your startup will take care of your customers. They'll take care of your patients. And yeah, if you do right by the product, as you mentioned here, it goes a long way to to help make the right decisions. That's a good line. You take care of your product. Your product will take care of you, yeah, especially in healthcare, yeah. Well, I can certainly relate to
Aaron Moncur:feelings of stress and anxiety when when things go wrong and you're the person in charge of fixing them. I think that's the hallmark of someone who is dedicated to his craft and takes ownership and responsibility. Nevertheless, it's not fun. Over the years, have you learned any new and effective ways to deal with that stress and anxiety?
Bob Hankins:You know you're an engineer for a reason, because you like to solve problems other people can't solve, and you've got that history. So I think you have to remember the fun of the job, the fun of the role, and understand that. But you also have to have a good good wellness system, good support system, really balance your life. You know you're more than your your job. So anything you can do on your hobbies and separate that you can't really turn off the thinking. You're always thinking about it, whether running to Home Depot, you're running to hardware store, or you see a problem that somebody is struggling with, you really can't turn it enough, but you have to remember that you enjoy it. You're an engineer for a reason, and you've got certain talents other people don't see it the same way you do. So you bring a unique perspective to that, and then just balance it out so that you keep a realistic perspective of what's important in life. Yeah, yeah. I agree with your statement that it's hard to just turn your brain off. I find that I'm constantly thinking about work, even when I'm home with the family, and it's hard to just shut that switch off. A couple of ways that I've found to I don't
Aaron Moncur:even know if I can say it's an intentional mechanism for switching it off, but the end result is the same. I guess a guilty pleasure watching a show on TV helps me tune out and not think about it for a little while. And then I trained in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and that's been a great way to shut it off. I you know, when someone's trying to choke you or put you in an arm bar, you can't think about anything else. And I found that that mental taxation is is very similar to physical taxation. For example, if you're running a marathon, eventually you're going to get tired, you're going to fatigue, and eventually you'll stop right whether it's 10 miles, 100 miles, whatever it is, depending on your level of training. And I think mentally, it's the same if you're just, quote, unquote mentally running, eventually you're going to fatigue, you know, mentally and have to stop. And so giving yourselves those breaks where you're not thinking about whatever that thing is, work or a project, and just letting your brain not think about that. It's, it's like the, well, it's like physical rest, almost. But for your brain, yeah, and, you know, I enjoy DIY projects around the house and woodworking, and also hiking and backpacking, right, where you have to watch where you step every single step, right? You might trip over a route. You might trip over a rock you might, you know, Miss A VISTA or viewpoint that really, you know,
Bob Hankins:consumes your mind power and makes you think about something else. Yeah, right, makes you stop thinking about work. So I know I have a good vacation if I come back and I forget all my passwords because I've been thinking about something else. So that's good. Yeah, that's great
Aaron Moncur:for again, our listeners right now who are interested in going into specifically medical device leadership, what's one piece of advice you would give them?
Bob Hankins:You know, take advantage of your team. Know that you don't know everything, and don't be afraid to ask a lot of questions. And have an appreciation of not only the importance but the value of the standards, the requirements, the specifications and the overall process. It can be tedious at times. It can be a headache at times, but it's there for a reason to make sure we've got the right protections. And I think trucker even might have said it. He said, standardization is not the
Aaron Moncur:is not the enemy of innovation. You can still innovate in a structured organization. You can still innovate in a structure, you know, where you have documentation and and standards and requirements. It's just a different it looks a little different, yeah. Amen. All right. Well, Bob, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. You've been very generous sharing your insights and wisdom and experience with us, and I know that a lot of engineers listening out there are going to benefit from it. So thank you.
Bob Hankins:How can people get in touch with you? You know, just the same way you got in touch with me through LinkedIn. So I am on LinkedIn under Robert hickens, you'll find that. And feel free to reach out if anybody has any questions or any anything interesting to talk about. So appreciate the opportunity.
Aaron Moncur:Terrific Bob. Anything else that we should cover that we haven't talked about yet,
Bob Hankins:there's always more to talk about. I can talk about medical devices. It's been my career all day, but it's, it's a great opportunity working on contract manufacturing, working with customers that are working on the bleeding edge of new technology and new exciting things and and to be a part of that. So I really go to work boards. It's been fun.
Aaron Moncur:That's a good sign. Okay, Bob, thank you again.
Bob Hankins:Yeah, thanks, Aaron. Good talking with you.
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 and D services. Visit us at Team pipeline.us. To join a vibrant community of engineers online. Visit the wave. Dot, engineer, thank you for listening. You being an engineer, has more than 300 episodes, and you don't have to listen to them in order. If you're dealing with a specific challenge right now, there's a good chance we've already interviewed an engineer who's been through it. You can jump around search by topic and listen to what's most relevant to you see you on the next episode, you.
