Design Process Trainer/Consultant

 

Applying design process best practices to bring quality hardware products to market.

 

Ullman's Method

Ullman does not push a specific design tool or method, rather he assesses the current product development situation, your goals, and limitations.  He then suggests a path from the present reality to improved product quality and time to market using industry best practices.

 

Step 1: Assess the current design process.  He meets with engineers and managers to understand the current process, and their skills and prior training.  He develops an understanding of problems and issues that are in the way of product quality and rapid development.

​

Step 2: Understand where you want to go.  Ullman helps set realistic goals.  He does not push any one methodology but is knowledgeable and experienced in all mechanical and systems design methods.  He can help you develop a portfolio of design methods and choose which ones best fit your needs. 

​

Step 3: Train to close the gap.  Training is provided that is tailored to the needs and experience of your organization. Training exercises are customized to your products and problems.

​

Step 4: Work with your organization to internalize and exercise the training on your products. Follow-up meetings are provided to help ensure that new methods stick and are successful.  He helps develop metrics to measure success.

 

Recent (2019 -2024) experiences:

 

• An Optical Aiming Systems Manufacturer needed to align their hardware design process with the Agile process used in software development. Ullman helped the teams by providing Agile training and ongoing consultation, improving their ability to bring new products to market on time.

• A multi-national manufacturer of electric motors needed to improve their product development process in one of their European groups.  Ullman spent a week with the group assessing and training them. He continues via the web with monthly product reviews to improve their use of functional modeling, morphologies, and FMEA.  

• An instrumentation manufacturer wanted to apply agile/scrum methods to the development of a new measuring device.  Ullman spent a day assessing the situation at their facility, a day training the team and now meets with the team weekly over the web supporting their transition to Scrum. He was invited to do the same at a second site. 

• A market leader in residential and commercial electronics had challenges getting products to market on time.  Ullman spent a day interviewing engineers and managers and then suggested that they needed to get a better handle on their introduction of new technologies.  This led to the development of new tools and an on-going effort toward the introduction of Lean and Agile design methods. 

​

 

​