I design manufacturing equipment for a living. Every now and then I will have to redesign a piece of equipment that someone else made because the process is not working. Maybe a cutter is leaving burrs on part edges, or a thermal bonder is warping the tubes that it is supposed to join.

When trying to correct a piece of equipment that is not performing as intended, my 1st step is to understand what a successful part is supposed to look like, and understand exactly how the parts being produced deviate from those standards. In many cases I examine parts under a microscope in an attempt to gain a detailed understanding of its defects.

My 2nd step is to examine the equipment that produced the part and try to figure out why it is not producing acceptable parts. What exactly is causing the particular defects that I have observed?

My 3rd step is to come up with a new design for the equipment in hopes of correcting the issue. This often involves iteration and experimentation. I rarely get things perfectly right the 1st time.

When completing step 3, sometimes a very small change is the difference between successful and unsuccessful parts. A single washer, or a dimension change of 0.002’’, has literally been the difference between success and failure in some of my designs.

In other cases a total redesign is necessary, because the fundamental concept of the design is flawed.

At times, I have experimented with changes that have actually made the process output worse instead of better. When this happens, I learn thing that I incorporate into my next design, and then experiment again and hope for better results.

You can probably see where I am going with this. The BYU football program is like a complex machine that is not producing a successful output. Here are a few points that follow from this analogy.

1) In engineering, perfect parts don’t exist. In football, perfect programs don’t exist. In both cases it is important to figure out your acceptance criteria. Losing to MWC teams at home is outside of my acceptance criteria. The individual scratches and dents that make up these unsuccessful results are things like no pass rush, turnovers, penalties, poor pass coverage, giving up 3rd & long conversions, short kickoffs, and over-thrown deep balls.

2) I have no idea what is going on inside of the machine that is the BYU football program. I can’t troubleshoot it because I am completely unqualified to look underneath the cover and identify what components are working just fine and which ones need redesign. As far as I can tell, most of CB is right here with me. I feel like most of you guys are as qualified to offer solutions to the football program as you are to open up a band sealer and troubleshoot it.

3) Just because a machine produces a few parts that are out of spec, doesn’t mean you scrap the whole thing and start over. Getting rid of Bronco is the equivalent a complete redesign. I am inclined to believe that our situation is one that can be fixed with the equivalent of adding washers in the right places rather than a total redesign.

4) Just the same way that some of my designs have made things worse, some of Broncos decisions have made things worse.* I hope that he is continuing to learn from his failures, the same way that I learn from my failed designs. It almost always takes some failure to make it to success. However, I know that if I fail too often, and I consistently take too long to deliver successful equipment, I will be out of a job. Are we at that point with Bronco? I don’t think we are, but I can see the room for disagreement.

5) Some design projects have been completely over my head and I have had to give up on them. In some cases it was because I lacked experience, in others because I lacked education, and in still others it was because the company didn’t want to buy a $5,000 piece of analysis software. If BYU does decide that Bronco is in over his head, they better hire someone that either has more experience or that is more talented, and they will need to be willing to dish out some serious cash.

* Note: At this point in the analogy changes from Bronco being part of the equipment to being the equipment’s designer. Whatever. All analogies break down at some point.