Just because something can be designed or built does not mean it should be. We’ve all seen hardware or equipment that might look cool, but is serves little or no real, practical purpose.
The following comment is from Elon Musk when asked about hardware new product development.
In your search results, you can add more Geographies, add more Services, plus Industries to further customize additional results.
ELON: “I try to have us all implement, rigorously, this sort of five-step process.
First, make your requirements less dumb. Your requirements are definitely dumb. It does not matter who gave them to you. It is particularly dangerous if a smart person gave you the requirements, because you might not questions them enough.
Then, try very hard to delete the part, or process. This is actually very important. If you are not occasionally adding things back in, you are not deleting enough.
The bias tends to be very strongly towards; let’s add this part or process step, in case we need it.
So you got to delete the part or process step, super important, and you can’t hedge your bets.
Whatever requirement or constraint you have it must come with a name, not a department, because you can’t ask the department, you have to ask a person and that person who is putting forward the requirement or constraint must agree. They must take responsibility for that requirement.
SEE ALSO
Engineering product development and design validation
Pilot build new product launch specs
Anyway, so…step one, make your requirements less dumb.
Step two, delete the part, or process step. If you’re not adding things back in ten per cent of the time, you’re clearly not deleting enough.
And then, only the third step is simplify, or optimize. The reason this is the third step, not the first step, it’s possibly the most common error of a smart engineer, is to optimize a thing that should not exist.
In your search results, you can add more Geographies, add more Services, plus Industries to further customize additional results.
And then finally you get to step four, which is, accelerate cycle time. You’re moving too slowly. Go faster. But don’t go faster until you worked on the other three things first.
And then the final step is automate.
Now, I have personally, made the mistake of going backwards on all five steps. Multiple times. Where, I automated, accelerated, simplified, and then deleted.”
Summary
1. Make your requirements less dumb
2. Delete the part or process
3. Simplify or optimize
4. Accelerate cycle time
5. Automate
