Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S7E22 Amelia Howe | Developing Medical Device Injectrodes for Pain Reduction, & Project Management Best Practices
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Amelia Howe is a biomedical engineer and R&D project manager whose career spans startups, research labs, and established medical device companies. She currently leads cross-functional development programs at COLTENE, where she coordinates teams across engineering, quality, regulatory, and manufacturing to bring new medical devices from concept to international launch.
Amelia’s journey into engineering began with a pivotal shift early in her academic career. While studying at The University of Akron, she transitioned from nursing to biomedical engineering after discovering the field through biomechanics research. Working in Dr. Brian Davis’s lab, she contributed to innovative research on shear forces and biomechanics, helping analyze how human movement affects pressure and stress on the body.
After graduating summa cum laude, Amelia joined Neuronoff, Inc. as its first employee. In the fast-moving startup environment, she wore nearly every hat imaginable—conducting research, developing prototypes, establishing quality systems, and contributing to core patents. She played a key role in the early development of the Injectrode neuromodulation technology while helping build the company’s quality management system toward ISO 13485 compliance.
Over time, Amelia gravitated toward project leadership, recognizing that even highly talented engineers need structured coordination to ensure complex products make it through development. She moved into project management roles, overseeing multiple technical programs simultaneously and aligning engineering, regulatory, and business teams around clear timelines and milestones.
Today, in addition to her role at COLTENE, Amelia is launching Chrysalis Business Consulting, where she provides project management and business development support to medical device startups. With both an engineering background and an MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology, she brings a rare perspective that blends technical depth with strategic business insight.
LINKS:
Amelia Howe LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ameliaehowe/
Company website: https://www.linkedin.com/company/chrysalis-business-consulting-llc/
Aaron Moncur, host
Subscribe to the show to get notified so you don't miss new episodes every Friday.
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 like cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us at www.teampipeline.us
Watch the show on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@TeamPipelineus
Project management is figuring out what needs to be done and who needs to do it, and then determining what it's going to take to actually execute that, and then tracking that execution to make sure it actually gets done
Aaron Moncur:Welcome to the Being an Engineer podcast. Today's guest is Amelia Howe, a biomedical engineer turned R and D project manager, who has built her career at the intersection of engineering quality systems and product development. Amelia started as the first employee at neuromodulation startup Neuronoff, where she helped develop early prototypes, contributed to patents, and even handled everything from testing to payroll in the company's early days. Today she leads new product development projects at Cool Teen, managing cross-functional teams and overseeing international medical device launches. She's passionate about bridging the gap between engineering and project management, helping teams turn innovative ideas into real devices that improve lives. Amelia, thanks so much for being with us on the show today.
Amelia Howe:Glad to be here. Thank you for having me.
Aaron Moncur:All right, so Amelia, what made you decide to become an engineer?
Amelia Howe:Oh, starting out with the fun ones. So I actually started my university studies in nursing. I knew as a kid that I loved science. I took anatomy and physiology in high school, and I was like, that the human body, super interesting. And so, of course, the logical pathway from that, pick a career where you use the science of studying human bodies, nursing, right, very traditional pathway. Yeah, I got a year and a half into studying nursing at the University of Akron. I made it through pre-nursing. I was actually in clinicals, I was in a nursing home, and I hit a wall. I have the greatest respect for all nurses, and this, this is absolutely part of it, but the type of work that's done there, and especially the very emotional aspect of it, of the caring for people day to day, was too much for me. It was not something that was going to be viable for me to do long term. I was trying to find ways, could I be a nurse practitioner, could I be not at a hospital, but I loved again the study of the human body. I was taking pathophysiology and microbiology, and all of these things, and I said to my honors advisor, 'Hey, how can I transfer these courses into something that still lets me especially keep the anatomy and physiology credits? And he did this little boop boop, he said,"You can either do biochemistry or biomedical engineering, and I said, "That sounds interesting, biomedical engineering. So I transferred in to engineering, which apparently is not a usual thing to do. Graduated in four and a half years, and that first, the first class I took, I was like, this is where I'm supposed to be,
Aaron Moncur:so is the way.
Amelia Howe:Yes,
Aaron Moncur:Four and a half years, that's not bad at all. Was that including the time you spent in the nursing degree?
Amelia Howe:Yes, it was.
Aaron Moncur:Well, that's super impressive. I mean, I was on the five year plan myself, and I didn't take a nursing degree, all right. Tell us a little bit about what that translation transition was like. Was it, was it pretty seamless going from nursing to engineering, or was there, was there a culture shock? Even I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that there was probably a pretty different mix of gender in those different majors as well, right. So, what was all that like?
Amelia Howe:Yeah, you're very correct. That was one of the main culture shocks for me, was I went from a class of 95% women to 10% women, maybe even less in some of the electrical classes, but super interesting to me to see how those dynamics shifted again. I really appreciated the focus on the hard science, that was not a hard transition for me, because that was where my passion lay already, but yes, there was definitely a change in perspective of how does maybe class collaboration work. What does lab work look like? Oftentimes the nursing labs were more focused on this, is like something patient-focused. Or something like that, as opposed to, yeah, you're in a physics lab, you're like moving this hammer and things like that. So I really appreciated everyone who came around me, all the new friends I was able to make in the program. It was very interesting as well. Once I got further along, I don't know about other schools, but at Akron, biomedical engineering is the one that is closest to gender parity, so when I joined biomedical engineering, BME for short was 40% women. So once I got into those major specific classes, it was definitely back more towards what I was kind of used to. By the time I left it, the ratio is back above, actually above 50% but of course that's contrasted to maybe something like civil engineering, which I think, what again, at the time I was there, which was quite a bit ago, was still less than 10% women,
Aaron Moncur:That you had done some labs and things for the nursing program, moving into engineering, were they very different, or did you feel like you already had kind of a foundation from the nursing background,
Amelia Howe:Chemistry and biology? I definitely had a very firm foundation. I ended up taking something like five or six semesters of chemistry, just because the exact ones I had in nursing didn't transfer over, so a lot of the labs and things I was doing, maybe for the second time, but the physics labs for the and the electrical engineering labs were the ones where I was maybe again, it's it's still a lab, there's still the techniques you put on your safety glasses, you take your good notes, but the places where I had to maybe learn a little more from scratch.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I remember what was it? It was a physics class, electromagnetism, I think it was. And, man, those labs were rough. I remember sitting in some of those, thinking, I don't know if engineering was for me, this is too hard, and and almost giving up once or twice, but, but continuing to push through it. Did you ever have an experience going through engineering school where you thought to yourself, "Oh, maybe I made a mistake, maybe I should go back to nursing or something else? Or was it pretty, pretty smooth sailing as far as your, your commitment to the discipline?
Amelia Howe:Once I made it into engineering, I pretty much knew that was where I wanted to be. I did have a bit of a, like, personal moment the first time I got a B. I was one of those students,
Aaron Moncur:like, my wife, yeah,
Amelia Howe:yeah. So, like, yeah, calc two, calc three, great, love those things. I got into differential equations, and I'm like, oh, okay, so this is how far my math brain will get me. Let's, let's buckle down and study to get this done with, so I can stop. But in general, yes, and especially once I got further along. So I think one of the interesting things about biomedical engineering is that it's really a specific application of it's built on a lot of mechanical engineering, but you're taking that tool set, you're taking the physics, the math, the chemistry, and you're adding then that knowledge of the human body, you take a little bit of medicine along the side, you get up to date with what the research looks like, and then you say, How can we apply this toolbox that the engineering mindset gives you to solve these human-shaped problems? Because biomedical engineering, you can do quite a few different kinds of things, so I would take, you know, statics, dynamics, mechanics of solids, and then we took mechanics of biological tissues, which said, all right, what is the elastic modulus of a bone? What are the materials that are most similar to a bone, and if we're putting a metal splint on a bone, why does it matter that we get those moduluses to a similar place, and the answer is because a bone is a living tissue, and it will actually, if it's, if it's attached to something that's too strong, the bone will actually start to dissolve away. It's like, I don't need to do my job anymore, because there's already something stronger here. Yeah, so you kind of have to keep up with these living systems, and there's different challenges that are part of that. So, as I got further along and started applying those tools, it just got more and more interesting.
Aaron Moncur:Early bird tickets are now available for PDX 2026 but only for a few weeks. PDX is not your typical trade show. Attendees gain practical training and real-time consulting on a wide range of engineering topics. Early bird tickets are $165 while regular pricing starts. It's at $375 so registering now saves you over$200 Also, early bird pricing is only available through May 30-first. After that, ticket sales close completely until August, at which point they'll only be available at the regular price. So, if you're planning to attend PDX this year, now is the time to register. To learn more and purchase your ticket, visit PD Expo dot engineer, that's PD EXPO dot engineer. That's a great example. I went through the biomedical BME. Also, biomedical engineering is bioengineering, I think, technically was the term, and it really did feel like another mechanical degree, but applied to the body. There were a lot of very similar classes, plus physiology, plus anatomy, right? Layered on. So, fast forward a little bit, you graduate college, and you have your degree now in biomedical engineering, and you start to work for a company called Neuronoff, is that right?
Amelia Howe:Yes.
Aaron Moncur:Okay.
Amelia Howe:Yeah. Think about Neuron On Off.
Aaron Moncur:Okay. Okay. Tell us a little bit more about the company, and you were, I think, you were like the first employee, is that right?
Amelia Howe:Yes, I was.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, so this is this is like prime time startup territory. Tell us all about Neuronoff and your experience there.
Amelia Howe:Absolutely, so I started working at Neuronoff in April of 2019 There were three co-founders, and there was me, so out first employee, I was figuring out what the heck am I supposed to do, and they were figuring out what the heck are we supposed to do with her.
Aaron Moncur:How did they find you, or how did you find
Amelia Howe:them? I reached out to a family friend who had done a PhD in neural engineering at Case Western Reserve University, which is a great university in the area, and I said, "Hey, Manfred, do you happen to know anywhere I can just send you my resume and you can get it to people you know? And he said,"You know what, I'm starting a company and you look like you'd be a good fit. So, yeah. yeah, I got connected there, but yeah, I started in my first day, I came on board, and they were like, all right, let's do some preclinical testing, and so I learned how to do preclinical lab work right there, not learned to, but picked it up as a greater skill. Figured out how to start setting up what the company needed as a lab, as its own kind of space. And also,
Aaron Moncur:how did you know how to do that? Because this, this is your first job out of college. I remember my first job out of college, I knew how to do, I knew how to do CAD. I was pretty good with mechanical design, but outside of that, pretty limited. And so you're thrust into this brand new company, three founders in you, and right out of school, and they're, I guess, giving you the responsibility of setting up this new lab. Like, where did you even start?
Amelia Howe:Thankfully, I could start with people who knew what they were doing, so
Aaron Moncur:beginning mentors.
Amelia Howe:Yes, at the beginning, this was run in parallel with a university lab, one of the research labs at the university. So I was able to go to the established lab managers, or some of these PhD students who had been in the area for several years, and I could say, all right, How do I purchase like Kim wipes? Or we need, we have maybe some of the electromechanical testing equipment, but where do I source the right wire to connect with this other thing? So we kind of, I was able to, especially as we started hiring employee number two and three, we were all able to kind of pool not only our resources but be able to work with and alongside folks who knew a lot more, so that collaboration, especially at that early stage, was invaluable. Otherwise, I would still be sitting in the basement of that lab.
Aaron Moncur:And tell us a little bit more about what the company did.
Amelia Howe:Absolutely, so Neuronoff is developing the inject road, or the injectable electrode, for chronic peripheral nerve pain relief as an alternative to opioids.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, how does this work? If you can talk about
Amelia Howe:it. Absolutely, so the idea is that you have a nerve that's causing you pain. Let's say it's sciatica, something pinched in your wrist, in a shoulder, and so this nerve is causing pain, oftentimes chronic pain. Happens beyond an initial incident, so like you'll have an accident, you'll hurt your back, and the pain signals get turned on by that nerve, but because the pain signals are on, the body can't heal fully, there's like inflammation and signals and things like that, and so the body gets confused, keeps saying there's pain, pain, pain, and the healing is actually unable to occur because of that, so the idea with the inject drode is that you're able to inject onto that nerve, so it's a medical device, it is a physical device that fits in an 18 gage needle, let's say, so you take the 18 gage needle, you take it down to the nerve, you inject the device onto the nerve like a wire, and then you bring that up to the surface. You inject the rest of the device as kind of like a collector under the surface. So, essentially, you've created an artificial nerve, right? You've created a conductive path from the skin down to your target, and so then what you can do is slap a patch on that and stimulate with an external pulse generator similar to a tense patch, and so you're zapping that nerve, very technical term, to provide a nerve block, or in a way you can think about it like canceling that pain signal electrically before it can make it back up to the brain, which gives the body a chance to calm down and heal, is
Aaron Moncur:fascinating. How far along are they? I mean, at what point is this going to be ideally released to the public?
Amelia Howe:The Naranoff team is currently working towards the first FDA submission. They're hoping end of this year.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, that is super exciting. I mean, my dad has pretty bad neuropathy, right? His feet hurt, and something like that. He has back pain as well, and so many of us, we suffer with these aches and pains. If we could have a way to eliminate that, that would be enormous. Just, I mean, literally life changing for so many people,
Unknown:yeah, yeah, it's such a cool concept,
Aaron Moncur:yeah, that's fascinating. So, a tiny, tiny little medical device, how big is a nerve? I actually don't know that. I mean, like, how do they even find the right nerve and attach to
Amelia Howe:it? Right, nerves can be as wide as a single cell, a single neuron, and they can get up to I think your vagus nerve in your neck is a couple millimeters across, if I'm not mistaken. Don't come at me, the scientists I know who study the vagus nerve, but they can be pretty sizable. You can see them visually, but if you're going to be finding these nerves in the body, the way that we targeted them was either if you're in a kind of shallower area, like an ankle or a wrist ultrasound, so you have people waving the wand over it, and they, ultrasound technicians are so talented people who work with ultrasound, they can move this wand and get that fuzzy black picture and say, all right, yeah. Here's, here's the muscle, and you see this little like circle thing with that casts a shadow, that's a nerve. And then they'll put in the needle, and you can actually see the tip of the needle, because it's metal, and they approach the nerve, and they're like, all right, we are right next to our target, we're going to deploy, and then you can see the inject road, as it comes out, because it's a helical structure, so it shows up as a very distinctive point on the ultrasound. The other option is fluoroscopy, which is kind of like video x ray, so we used both of those extensively during our preclinical work, our testing work as well, so the doctors, pain doctors, are our main end users. They are all wizards with the technology. We nearly got competent.
Aaron Moncur:So cool. I can't wait till this comes out. I hope it's a huge success. I'd love to get my dad in there to help him with his, his neuropathy. What happens at the end of life? How do you take this out from the body, or does it just like dissolve somehow?
Amelia Howe:I love that you asked that question. That was actually my personal project for three years.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, wow. Okay. Tell us all about
Amelia Howe:it. Absolutely, because, yeah, device removal is a huge thing, and especially in the medical device world, oftentimes it's an afterthought. So, you'll have like these cardiac pacemakers, and these leads are like these screws that attach to the heart muscle, and sometimes you just have to leave them in there. So, we wanted to make sure that as we were building out this concept, as we were making this device that it was removable, so in January of 2021 I picked this up. I said,"All right, how can we take this back out again? I started just like kind of pulling on it after it had been implanted. I tried twisting it, I tried all these different kinds of methods, um. Started proving it out in ballistics gel, which was my favorite thing, because just made me think of Mythbusters every single time.
Aaron Moncur:That's right, Adam Savage.
Amelia Howe:But then we started moving on. We started validating our methods. We created test methods with vacuum oven and an Instron test machine, we said, all right, it takes this much force to pull it out of the gel, and then it takes this much force to break it, so we were trying to come up with our safety factors, but then you know there's only so far that an in vitro test will take you, so we started working with our preclinical animal models, we implanted different versions of this device. We then took them out after various periods of time, measured the force that it took to remove them, and we got a really solid data set up to 15 months in rats, and by the time that we wrapped up my work there. I believe we had three months in pigs, which are again a very close simulation anatomically to humans. So I was able to present several posters on that, and actually I have a first author publication on the topic showing that relative to the force it takes to break our injector device, the injector device, the force it takes to remove it is at least five times lower, so it's very safe to remove it, even after that kind of chronic implantation use case.
Aaron Moncur:Amazing. What, what were one or two of your most favorite parts of working at a brand new startup.
Amelia Howe:I really loved the fact that I could see that exactly what I was doing was moving the company forward, so I could look back a year in, and a year in was super easy, right? This existed, it didn't before.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah,
Amelia Howe:I'm here, but even five years in, just walking through the company and seeing all right, this intern that I brought in three, four years ago is now a full-time employee, seeing this test procedure that I worked on is being used in manufacturing, seeing this documentation that I set up in our electronic quality management system were on version five by this point and it held up to an ISO 13 485 audit, so it was really, really clear to see how my contributions helped the company, which is just talk about job satisfaction, right?
Aaron Moncur:I think that's what all of us crave, right? We want purpose in our work, and when you can look back and see that, yeah, this thing I did materially move the company forward, that's going to be hugely fulfilling. Yeah, how about the opposite? Were there areas where you wish that they had been different, or I don't know, not as limited. What, what was not as fun about working in a brand new startup?
Amelia Howe:Yeah, so one of the things I think is just inevitable, it just comes with the territory, is sometimes there are fires, and sometimes you're the only person who can put it out, so I did get the 9pm email that had to be resolved by midnight. It just had to happen, you know.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah.
Amelia Howe:So that happens sometimes. I think one of the things that was interesting, and again, interesting to work with, and again, again, part of the system is just the very flat hierarchical structure, again, good things about it, bad things about it, but sometimes you're trying to figure out who to tell about something, and it's like, well, do I go straight to the CEO, because not sure, especially as, like, a 24 year old.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah,
Amelia Howe:trying to be clear about communication, and some of these things were very.. again, make it up as you go. This was my first job out of college. I didn't really have much perspective on what a typical company does, or what a typical response was. So I worked it out again. The team is absolutely fantastic. I really appreciated working with them, and I appreciate all that they've helped me do and grow as a person. But there was a little bit of like finding my feet along the way.
Aaron Moncur:Did you know going into it that your particular personality mindset was was well aligned with what's necessary to succeed in a startup, or did you just kind of have no idea, or maybe not even think about it? Is your first job, you know, startup, not startup, I don't know what's the difference, but did you have any sense going into it that this was. To be a great fit for you or anything along those lines.
Amelia Howe:Yeah, so I think what I started, I was more thinking of the personality match with a few people at the company that I had met with the founders, and so from that end I was like, this is great, they're cool people, I can work with them, but I think if what you're, what you might be getting at is my personal risk profile did match up well. Again, I was fresh out of college, I was raring to go, I was ready to maybe do some of these things that maybe a different person who felt more reserved about it or who had had a different work perspective coming in might have hesitated to kind of step out on a limb and do all of those things, so it worked out well for me with my personal level of uncertainty that I could take, but yeah,
Aaron Moncur:terrific. Let's talk a little bit about project management, that is something that you've gotten into quite a bit, right? In the simplest terms that you can think of, how would you define project management?
Amelia Howe:Project management is figuring out what needs to be done and who needs to do it, and then determining what it's going to take to actually execute on that, and then tracking that execution to make sure it actually gets done.
Aaron Moncur:So, I'm hearing what, who, how, when.
Amelia Howe:Yes.
Aaron Moncur:Okay. And tell us about your first project management experience
Amelia Howe:that would have been my removal project, so I got assigned to this. I had to figure out what, what was the scope, what did I, what was I trying to do, short term, medium term, long term. So, short term, I needed to set up a test to figure out what removal actually looked like. Long term, I wanted as viable chronic data as I could find to prove out the safety or otherwise of that long term removal, so I needed to figure out how to get to point A, but I didn't know how to get to point Z, so at some sometimes that's one of the main parts of project management, you have to figure out how to get to point A. You need to know what point B is, and you need to establish general direction toward point Z. And so that whole arc was part of my first experience of then not only for myself but also bringing in other people. I had two interns that I managed during that project, and figuring out how to create work for them that they could do that would fill their time, that would also again move us toward that end point. So I learned a ton during that process that really has helped shape me and my current perspectives toward project management, which is, which is my job right now.
Aaron Moncur:Pipeline now offers procurement of custom machined parts at significantly lower costs without sacrificing speed or quality. We design and build custom machines ourselves, so we consume a lot of precision machined components. Over the past several years, we developed a proven overseas supply chain to support that work, and in 2025 we successfully piloted that capability with select customers. Now we're opening it up more broadly. If you'd like to see how our prices and lead times compare. Send us a drawing or two for quote. Visit Team pipeline.us or message me directly on LinkedIn. In the beginning, and has this changed over the years? What were some of the tactical tools that you use to communicate to your interns, those that that were working underneath you, the what and the how and the when. I mean, were you, were you using paper to, you know, write tasks down and pass those off? What was it? A digital environment, was it mostly one on one communication conversations? How, how are you communicating tasks back and forth with your, your team?
Amelia Howe:Mostly through Google Chat. Honestly,
Aaron Moncur:okay, it's yeah,
Amelia Howe:quick, it's easy, and it is still a written record, because I don't know about you. You've probably.. this is a fairly universal experience. You have a bunch of talented people walk into a room, everyone sits down in the room, they say we want to solve a problem. You talk about the problem for half an hour, everyone stands up, they nod their head. Sit each other, and they walk out, and then next week everyone walks into the same meeting room, sits down, and says we need to solve the problem. Did anything get done that week? No one knows. Probably not. That's where project management.. that's where I picked it up. So I saw this happening. I said, these are super talented people. We all agree that the problem needs to be solved, just need a little direction. So, note taking is just one of the cornerstones. You can't get anywhere if you don't know what's been said and if you don't know what to do next. So, clear action items, clear written communication will build you that momentum. So, what happened last week? What are we talking about today? What problems do we need to solve to get us to where we can keep working next week? And then write that down, make sure everyone has it. But then, at the end, as someone was wrapping up a project. I really appreciated the value of I had my interns usually put together just like a couple slides of a presentation. So, take a picture of your experimental setup, describe what materials you used, take a picture of your results, write it all out. Like, I know you have your spreadsheets, they're in the folder somewhere. Someone's going to have to find them later. But if you have the pictures, if you have your description of this is my background, this is what I learned, this is how it leads into, and you can show those slides to the next person coming in, especially in a turnover environment where you have maybe interns or summer folks. That quick visual update is also really helpful to get the higher ups, they're like, "Hey, what has your team been working on? I'm like this, so I tried never to underestimate the value of just, just give me a five minute presentation on what you did, and we can take that places.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, quick summary. Okay, so Google Chat, in the beginning, was one of the tools. Are you still using that, or have you moved on to different tools?
Amelia Howe:So, currently at Coal Team, we are a Microsoft company, not a Google company. So, for my regular project meetings, I update via Asana, so we have proper, very long term project schedules managed via our cloud integrated project management platform. My Asana schedules are detailed and thorough, so I write down this person needs to create label artwork, this person needs to approve it, this person from supply chain needs to get proofs. This is going to take two weeks. This is going to take one week. It's going to take two weeks. All right, it's going to take two weeks. That pushes things back this house, how far, this far. Um, so that kind of communication. My single source of truth is my project schedule. We then take notes, either whether that's me taking notes or whether it's one of the AI chat bots saying, all right, this is what happened, and this is what we talked about that wasn't captured in the schedule, and again everyone has access to those, it's in writing, we can take it forward and then message about the details if needed.
Aaron Moncur:Where do you keep your master project schedule? Is that in Asana also, or is that a different tool?
Amelia Howe:It is in Asana. We are, we have a template that we're working off of that I can then create. I can have all of my individual schedules, and then I can roll those all up into a portfolio or a folder where I can see them all relative to each other.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, we used to use Rike. Are you familiar with Wrike? Somewhat, yeah, it was pretty good. We used it for quite a while, but they kept raising the price. It just got more and more expensive, and so we were like, we need to find something that's a little bit more affordable. And so Asana is where we landed, and we've been using that for a couple of years now. It's been great. Yeah, easy to use, reasonably priced, and I know how it took us several years to figure out the best way to schedule people's time, team members, time. You know, what is Engineer A going to be working on next week, the next two weeks? How about Engineer B and C? What, what is your process for doing that? How do.. how do.. is there like a cadence that you follow regularly, or is it kind of project specific? But how do you. how do you communicate to people what they're supposed to be working on, and is it just you or their other project managers who are competing for different engineers' time?
Amelia Howe:Great set of questions. So, we're talking about resource allocation.
Aaron Moncur:Yes,
Amelia Howe:yes, so that. Is an interesting one, so I work across three projects that one of them has one engineer assigned to it, one of them has a second engineer assigned to it, one of them has the second engineer plus a third engineer plus a bunch of additional resources, that's an electromechanical project, so it's much more complex than the other two, so during our regular project meetings, I will pull up. Hey, these are the tasks that are going to happen this week. You are aware that these are coming up. You have everything you need for them, but again, for that visibility across projects, I am the only project manager at our site. I am the only project manager dedicated at our company. Actually, I am an experiment.
Aaron Moncur:Interesting. Okay.
Amelia Howe:Yes, but there are other.. there is other work that our engineers are pulled onto, whether that's production support or engineering changes or things like that. So, that's where I work very closely together with my manager, who was our overall R and D manager, so she manages the people and has the high level view on all work that's coming in. I manage on the projects specifically, so the tasks I get the overviews on. All right, every Monday we have a stand-up with our whole department, we talk about what we're working on. We go from that into the project meetings, and then midway through the week, we also have a second stand-up to discuss how this is all of the work that we're doing is affecting our overall schedules, milestones, things like that. So we, it has to be fairly detailed, because the work that we've got going on is a fairly complex interplay between several layers, so we spend a lot of time on resource allocation. It's a huge topic,
Aaron Moncur:but you're the only project manager there,
Amelia Howe:dedicated, yes, for the new product developments. I'm the one, so I have a view on what all of my engineers are doing in project, which is super helpful.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, so do you have to compete for their time with other teams, or do you have full control over how your engineers are spending their time?
Amelia Howe:I do have to compete.
Aaron Moncur:Okay.
Amelia Howe:Yes. So, for example, our electrical engineer may need to be pulled to the side to work on something that happened on the production floor with a board, or one of our other engineers will be needed to do a CAD update, or something like that. So, yes, I am competing somewhat, yeah,
Aaron Moncur:and how does that, I mean competing, quote unquote, how does that happen, right, with with others who are allocating resources, is there like a weekly meeting where you all get together and say I need this much time from this person, and I need that much time from that person, or is it a little less organized than that? You kind of just have conversations in real time as needed,
Amelia Howe:so that happens in those twice weekly stand-ups.
Aaron Moncur:Got it? Okay, so that's with the that's resource allocation stand-ups, not necessarily like engineering boots on the ground work,
Amelia Howe:it's both, ideally.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, okay. So it's the engineers in that meeting, and anyone involved in resource allocation. Everyone gets together in these stand-ups.
Amelia Howe:It's the engineers, it's me, and it's our manager. So she has.. if the engineer has been pulled into something else, they let me know, they let her know, and she says, "Wait, I didn't know that was coming, or she says, "Yes, I was aware that was coming. Let's shift around, or I say, "I really need you this week, so let's figure out what to do about that. So it's kind of our internal allocation, and then if that needs to be escalated to those outside teams, we will do so at that point.
Aaron Moncur:I'm getting really in the weeds here, as you've noticed, because we spent many years trying to figure out the best way to do this, and there were tools in Wrike that we used for a while, and that kind of worked, and where we've ended up right now, which has been working really well for us. We're not a huge team, right. We've got maybe 12 people that we're scheduling regularly, and we have a shocker, an Excel spreadsheet that we use with all of the different projects listed in one column, and then the different engineers, the different resources listed in the adjacent columns, and everyone who is responsible for leading a project, project lead, project managers, they're all in that meeting. The engineers, the individual contributor engineers, are not part of that meeting, but everyone who's responsible for allocating their time is, and so in real time you've got one. Four or five leaders in the room, kind of vying for position a little bit. Right, I need this person's time. Well, I need that person's time too. Okay, what? What can we do? And it's, it's been really effective, actually. We meet once a week on Friday mornings to do resource scheduling, and it's just worked out super well. So, like, if additional competitors enter your arena, that I share this because I'm sure other people out there are thinking about it as well, and hopefully it's helpful for them. Another thing that we learned, maybe it's specific to our team, but I kind of doubt it, is that in the early days, whether it was Reich or Asana, we used to use leave really, really detailed messages in the Asana task or the Reich task for like what the engineer was supposed to do, right? And it would take some time to just manage that description. Did we get all the detail in there? Has the engineer read this? Has the engineer understood this, and what we learned over time, and it took a few years to learn this, was that even though these project leads were going through great lengths to create very detailed, specific, thorough descriptions in the Asana Reich tasks, a lot of times the engineers weren't really reading through them all, and you know, I don't fault them, because we're all super busy, right? We're trying to do a lot juggling multiple balls, and it's, it's faster to have a conversation sometimes. So, most of the time, engineers were just having one on one conversations with the project leads about what they were supposed to be doing. So, we've, we've kind of taken a step back from being so detailed in the task descriptions that we write, and it's become not entirely, but but more just one on one conversations that happen kind of ad hoc throughout the week, in addition to that, the high level like resource allocation, scheduling, workload scheduling that we do on Fridays, anyway. That's that's what's worked well for
Amelia Howe:us. Yeah, you really can't discount that in person, just walking past each other in the hallway. I learned this fairly viscerally. I was just visiting our European sites for six weeks, so Coltine, the company that I currently work for, is a dental manufacturer. It's headquartered in Switzerland, and they have facilities in Switzerland, Germany, France, Toronto, Canada, and Cleveland, Ohio. So, just based on which companies they acquired. So, I've worked for the US site for about two years, and they sent me on a work exchange to both the German and the Swiss sites, super valuable experience. I got to see their manufacturing, their production, meet up with their different R&D and product manager teams, but I was also doing my regular job while I was over there, and for that six weeks, where I was a couple time zones off, I was on Zoom calls only, it was a little tough to stay in the loop, like we had our regular meetings, but those little conversations really add up.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, totally. Let's see, I want to hit on one more thing before we wrap up here. You have started a new business, on, I guess, on the side, right? A side hustle, is that accurate description for
Amelia Howe:it. Yes, it is
Aaron Moncur:okay. So, this is Chrysalis Business Consulting, is that right,
Amelia Howe:Chrysalis?
Aaron Moncur:Chrysalis. Thank you for the pronunciation. All right, so tell us a little bit about first of all, you're working a full-time job. What, what possessed you to stretch yourself even further and start a side hustle, and what are you doing with Chrysalis Business Consulting?
Amelia Howe:Absolutely, so what possessed me was that I've started out by taking an MBA online. I've been fascinated with the business side of how things happen, how things get done. It's part of the communication bent that I have, how am I supposed to communicate what I'm doing with our finance team, for example. So I took those classes, I now have a little bit of a base in finance, accounting, marketing, all of these things, and I did that online while I was working, so I knew I could handle, you know, some time on the side, enough time to study and pass this course of study, and as my capstone, I took this program in entrepreneurship. I had to create a business plan, so I said, you know what, what the heck, I've always wanted to start a business of my own, I'll just make that my, my capstone business plan, and I looked at this 33 page long document, and I said I can do that. This is workable. Oh no,
Aaron Moncur:yeah,
Amelia Howe:yeah. So Chrysalis Business Consulting is a small consulting firm, small meaning it's me, where I provide project. Management and business development services to medical device companies, especially startups. So, I've seen again from from the beginning, from the whiteboard, what it takes to develop a product all the way to something that you can sell, that engineering development pipeline, but I've also seen the behind the scenes of taking a bunch of engineers in a room and turning them into a company that is capable of selling that product, and that process of bringing a product to a point where you can market it, especially in such a highly regulated industry as medical device is something that I've gone through now several times. I've had, as you mentioned, I've run through at least three successful medical device launches in my time here at Coltean, and I've worked from the beginning to the end of the product with Neuronoff. So, I've kind of seen this from multiple sides, and I'm able to apply these skills, the skill set that I have, of this visibility, of these project management skills, of how that plays into the startup environment, and I'd love to help these companies out, but you put them on the right track early, so that's what I am aiming to do with Chrysalis.
Aaron Moncur:Congratulations, I love that. I had several side hustles myself back in the day before I started pipeline when I was working full time for someone else. What, what is given your business background, your consulting background, what is one thing that you wish individual contributors on an engineering team would understand about the business of engineering and medical device development.
Amelia Howe:Absolutely, so I think it's a switch in perspective, but the value that you provide, the value that you're creating, whether that's creating a CAD design, whether that's doing testing, whether that's updating a document, is intrinsically valuable in and of itself, but it is so much more valuable when you can point to what that gives to the company, so if you're updating a CAD design because the previous version didn't manufacture well. Let's say you are sitting there doing your work, you're like, this took me 10 hours, and someone writes down 10 hours engineer times engineer salary, and they're like, this cost us so much. What did it get us? But if you're able to point to and say I have decreased the manufacturing defects, I have improved our quality. This complaint isn't going to come our way anymore. If you're able to use that language of value, you don't have to turn into a business major. This is something that I picked, because communication is one of the things that I love, but if you're able to use a little bit of that value-oriented language, it can really help take what you do to the next level, because then you can communicate, maybe with folks from different departments, maybe you can communicate with your supervisor and point out that what you're doing, truly, you know, you know that it's good and it's necessary and it's helpful, but it helps you just take you one step further.
Aaron Moncur:Well said, any business ultimately needs revenue, and when I say revenue, the assumption is profitable revenue to survive, and so at the end of the day, the people at the top who are running the business, they're looking at the numbers, right, they're looking at the revenue that's coming in, and so to the extent that you, as an individual contributor, can can communicate what you're doing in the context of that revenue and and help your managers, your leadership understand how what you are doing specifically is is directly contributing to revenue for the company. I mean, I think that is the way to ensure job security, right? Because if, if leadership, you know, heaven forbid, if a company gets in trouble, they need to let some people go there. They're not going to let the people go who are directly contributing to revenue. That would be a ludicrous business decision to make. So that's that's my take on it.
Amelia Howe:Absolutely.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Well, Amelia, thank you so much for being with us today. This was super fun and delightful, I appreciate you sharing all of your background and insight, and I think probably a lot of engineers listening to this took, took a lot from it. I've been doing something at the ends of these podcasts, you know, you've been generous and shared so much with us, chances are there are some things that. Working on that, engineers out in the audience might be able to help with. Of course, you've got your side hustle right, so I'm sure you'd love, you know, referrals there. If anyone has work that you can help with that, that's great. Anything outside of that, you know, maybe you're looking for a subject matter expert in some subject or another, or trying to learn about a new technology or find a technology that fits an application that you're working on, anything that you can put out there to our audience that they might be able to help you with.
Amelia Howe:That's an excellent question. I am always happy to talk about project management with engineers, so that's one of my passions. Is how do we discuss this discipline that we all love and move it forward with the tools in that project management toolbox? So I would love to talk with anyone out there who is listening, who maybe does project management as a part of what you do as an engineer, or is a project manager of engineers? Please reach out, and I'd love to just have a conversation and learn more from you.
Aaron Moncur:Full, all right. Well, Amelia, thank you again so much for being on the show. I appreciate you, you're doing great things out there. Keep it up. Anything else that you'd like to say or mention before we sign off, and if not, what? How can people get a hold of you?
Amelia Howe:Yeah, absolutely. It's been fantastic. Thank you so much for having me on the show. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can also find Chrysalis on LinkedIn, Chrysalis Business Consulting LLC. And I hope you have a great rest of your day.
Aaron Moncur:All right. Great, thank you so much, Amelia.
Amelia Howe:Thank you. Bye.
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. Thank you for listening. 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.
