Design Classes

Usually when you take a survey you never have to think about it again. I happened to say I was an expert in design theory and methodology (my passion) and was willing to teach people about it on a Technical Education Committee survey at Lexmark. I ended up teaching five design classes: functional modeling, concept generation, concept selection, FMEA (failure modes and effects analysis), and risk assessment. These five topics roughly complete the design cycle for me in that order. I have always enjoyed sharing what I have learned with other people and this was another opportunity to do so. Each class had about a dozen people in attendance and I scored between “above average” and “outstanding” on the evaluation sheets. Everyone gave me an “outstanding” on the concept generation class with several notes of “I absolutely loved this class!”

I received another opportunity at Medtronic to teach this material as part of their Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) green belt class. I redid all of the material they had and almost everyone in the class said it was their favorite day. The instructor loved the new material as well. One of my colleagues heard about it and asked if they could use it to teach a green belt class at another site. They presented it and reported back everyone there enjoyed it and had fun along the way.