2. Do Not Dare Re-Invent the Wheel

CHANGING LIVES

The wheel was one of the most important inventions in human history. It was invented roughly in 3500 BCE, and undeniably changed two main aspects of our lives: transportation and agriculture. Before this, human beings were limited to transporting a certain amount of goods for a certain amount of distance. Things progressed very slowly.

The concept of the “wheel-and-axle” changed the course of history. It was also difficult to create since the holes at the center of the wheels and the ends of the cylindrical axles had to be nearly perfectly round and smooth. With thorough craftsmanship, it became a living reality and things now progressed much faster.

However, it still was not that fast enough.

Fast forward to the 21st century, you have cars with internal combustion engines that drive you far away in way much less time.

What is the similarity between those two inventions? They both have wheels and axles.

What is the difference between those two inventions? Everything else.

The point is, that a drastically improved lifestyle does not come from ‘improving’ the current design. It comes through ‘innovating’ from current design. Note how improve and innovate are different. We could improve the wheel design such that it is structurally stronger, wheel and axle generate low aerodynamic resistance, wheel and ground has less friction, all to increase the speed somewhat. However, we still are forgetting how that wheel and axle is powered. Animals such as horses were still to be used to push the wheel and axle to make it move forward. It was only as quick as the animals could run.  

This means that no matter how much we improve the current design it is not doing us any great deal benefit. Sure, maybe we need to push with a lesser force to make it move, or maybe once pushed it moves very smoothly, but does it take away the human effort? Or can it move faster than the pace at which horses will make it run? Does it really improve our lifestyle?

We enter the mode to innovate.

We realize that maybe a systemic mechanism that drives the whole “wheel-and-axle” system can be the ultimate solution. A mechanism that does not require arranging for horses and their capability, but a rather absolute mechanism that performs faster and consistently throughout. A mechanism that will dissolve the human effort and the literal ‘horsepower’. This entire transition took over 5000 years until finally, Carl Benz in 1886, invented the first automobile with a stationary gasoline engine, which was a one-cylinder two-stroke unit.

Internal combustion engines became the driving force for the “wheel-and-axle”, giving us cars or automobiles. This came out of innovation. In fact, engines started developing to meet industrial goals, and soon enough their importance was understood and implemented in automobiles as well.

However, we should not discredit the fact that this invention came useful for transportation only because we had a sense of wheels and axles to start with. We knew all the general components from which the “new invention” can blossom. We just had to figure out what the invention will look like. Most of the work was done by our ancestors, we had to find the next innovation that would transform our lifestyle.

It is also important to note that there is nothing wrong with trying to improve the current design. It is just that sometimes while making minimal improvements in a design, you may realize that the improvements are making a small percentage of impact on the user’s life so an innovative approach should be taken. Regardless, say you still want to improve your current design in certain ways such as if you built a car, you may want to improve its shape in the next model to counteract air resistance and/or to make it look appealing, just to make it a bit faster and a bit posher. Or you may want to use better tires for friction and handling, so it wears out a bit slower. But that is all that you are doing. Ask yourself if doing this improvement will change the consumer’s life. If you answer yes, proceed with it, but if it is a no, then most likely the improvement is not worth the time.

HARD CHOICES

In my university engineering days, I recall a consulting company giving my team a project on cannabis odor prevention from cannabis growing facilities.

The highly abridged problem statement went something like this:

The odor of cannabis cannot penetrate outside the cannabis growing facilities in Ontario according to the law in the province. Currently, carbon air filters are used in the HVAC exhaust lines to remove the odor of marijuana. However, carbon air filters often don’t last long and need replacement. Improve the carbon air filters or create an innovative design that can be retrofitted in the exhaust lines.

Notice how the problem statement asked for either “improve” or “innovate”. We had the option to improve the current carbon air filters, maybe so that it can stop odor better or last longer such that replacement is not done every 6 months but say 12 months. What good will that do? Yes, your running costs may be halved. Happy?

Well, what if there is a better way?

Turns out tilting towards the path of “innovation” seemed risky at first, since obviously, no one had done such a thing so far, like the first iPhone. However, the path of innovation gave the most success to my team, just like Apple’s returns.

We designed a new filtration mechanism entirely. Turns out, carbon air filters are used to “adsorb” the cannabis odor’s compounds. When a lot of it used to get adsorbed, the filters could not adsorb more so they needed replacement. Thus, we thought: What if we made a mechanism that maybe ‘destroys the marijuana odor compounds themselves’ instead of having to stick onto a filter and be thrown away after some months?

Based on this, we developed a mechatronic design around the research on photoelectrochemical oxidation filtration mechanism which that could be retrofittable in the exhaust lines. Yes, it sounds spooky and highly technical, but bear with me in the next sentence, it will all make sense. All the design did, was literally convert the cannabis odor compounds (Volatile Organic Compounds) into water vapor and carbon dioxide. No more odors to worry about. No more filters in the whole picture too, so no more replacement to deal with. At all.

We had the best design for value and overall presentation in the whole class and attracted couple of keen investors.

The takeaway is that you should judge and choose which activity would yield the maximum desired results for your client/customer/users. Say you are improving current carbon air filters and realized it had the potential to only reduce the replacement frequency by half, meaning the cost for clients to buy filters is halved per year. Say your competitor is innovating to make a filtration design that literally removes odor, so client does not have to worry about the provincial law; the entire design also does not have to be replaced but only maintained internally semi-annually, so the client does not even worry about any running cost other than insignificant energy cost or maintenance later down the line. Does it not sound like your competitor has the edge on you? Yes. So, in this case, innovation has the majority possibility to yield maximum results, so we will forgo the improvement aspect since it can impact only so much.

WHERE AND WHEN

On the contrary, if improvement is more reasonable and making an innovative design gets really sketchy and lack complementary technology to support its development, it is simpler to proceed with improvement project. For example, in majority manufacturing companies you already have giant robots and machines manufacturing products on a large scale, so every now and then they undergo breakdowns or don’t function properly, so the responsible team for this, usually maintenance/reliability, must find the root cause of the problem and see what corrective actions can be taken to solve it. Afterwards, it is important they take preventive actions such that these problems do not show up anymore. In both stages, most of the time the solution has little scope of innovation perhaps making another machine, but more regards to improving the existing machine.

Think of it this way: If you are a bottle manufacturing company and you bought a $1 million bottle manufacturing machine and a couple weeks into business it shows problems, would you troubleshoot and find ways to improve your expensive machine or would buy a better $2 million bottle manufacturing machine? Surely, it must never breakdown! You see, it matters what your role is, what your constrained scope is and what is the realistic method to solve the problem at the given time. In this very example however, if you are the designer of the product—the bottles themselves—you have your scope to innovate on how it should look and feel—of course you can do only so much in this field and on top of that you have the constraints of your current machine tooling as well. Hence, it depends on what type of company and work you are involved in that may reflect your chance to be able to innovate. Sometimes, making those small improvements is all you can do.       

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that improvements are unnecessary, in fact, for the bottle manufacturer, improving their current machine was the only best way to keep business going, but not in the open-ended case of solving the carbon air filter issue—innovation seemed the best way to go and as you will see, that is something that “must” happen. Someday, say 10 years down the line, if deemed necessary, the bottle manufacturing company will commission a whole new machine for production since their current one may have become obsolete in market, shows incredible number of problems and breakdowns and because every machine has a sort of lifespan.

I like to summarize all this discussion in a small but effective thought frame for all professions in any role: Improve where required, innovate when required.

ROAD NOT TAKEN

The common phrase to “reinvent the wheel” is meant to describe wasting a great deal of time or effort in creating something that already exists.

A client of mine once handed me to design a ‘compact, strong gear reducer with gear ratio 30:1’. This means 30 revolutions of input gear will cause output gear to rotate once. For elementary purposes, the following diagram should suffice the concept of two gears meshing, wherein if two gears have number of teeth N1 and N2 respectively, then their angular velocities ω1 and ω2 follow the relationship N1*ω1=N2*ω2. A smaller teeth gear will make more full revolutions than a bigger teeth gear in the same amount of time. Note that if one rotates clockwise, the other will rotate anti-clockwise.

Now, returning to the client’s need, it can be done in one step: have one input gear with 50 teeth and the output gear will have 1500 teeth. Easy, since 30 revolutions of the 50 teeth gear will cause the meshed 1500 teeth gear to have 1 revolution!

Wait. It is kind of unreasonable to have a gear with 1500 teeth and even if you did, it would be a big gear, not compact. So, what can we do? Hey, why not just have smaller teeth numbers altogether! So input gear can have 5 teeth and the output gear will have 150 teeth! There you go!

Wait. 5 teeth? This is realistically hard to create given it needs to match pressure angles and the module of other gear, making it unfeasible as well. So, we realize even if it is possible, it is just not feasible to have two gears attached for a 30:1 gear ratio, based on client’s needs.

This is what we have currently (top view) with the 50 and 1500 teeth example:

What can we do to make it more realistic? Why not add more gears? That only would mean adding one more shaft to start off with. If we keep adding more shafts, we will again arrive at the compact space issue. That means we should start with adding one more shaft and think of more gears with realistic number of teeth such that the combination yields 30:1 gear ratio and yet minimize space. For that, it takes a bit of math and realization that a lot of combinations can give that ratio. For this, we can use 20 teeth in input gear on first shaft and 100 gear teeth in second shaft. This means a gear ratio of 5:1. Now, on that second shaft we will place another gear with 20 teeth and a third shaft with 120 teeth gear. This gives additional gear ratio of 6:1. Now, the overall gear ratio from input to output is 5:1 x 6:1 = 30:1.

This is what the design looks like now:

As you can clearly see, despite adding one more shaft and two more gears in latest design compared to previous design, it suddenly becomes realistic and compact in size, achieving the desired 30:1 ratio. Of course, this is just a simplification of the higher math that was done and the availability of gear teeth in market to create the latest design in real life to a close 30.12:1 gear ratio.

However, my question to you is this: Was shifting from the design with 2 shafts and 2 gears to a design with 3 shafts and 4 gears an “improvement” or “innovation”?

I believe you and I by now are clear that this was a case of improvement. You see, I bet someone else might come up to me and say that I could have kept the same latest design but used different number of teeth on gears for various strength and durability reasons and maybe he would be right. So be it. Let’s use different number of teeth—results show using his combination of teeth yielded the same gear ratio and did not say cause much wear and tear on gears as much as my design, so what next? We implement his design. Nice job, he improved the design.

Someone else comes up and tells me he has done research on material properties and that instead of cast iron we should be using a specific steel for the shaft, that way power is efficiently transmitted without torsional failure. Here we go again…ok, let’s use his idea and guess what, results show shaft can endure more vibrations and handle more force. Nice job, he ________ the design. Fill in the blanks.

When I shifted from my initial design to final design, I only solved the compact issue if you think about it. I had no concern on the other part of the client’s needs: ‘strong’. I might have chosen some materials for the gears and shafts, but the other two guys came in with improvements in that sphere, trying to make the design stronger. Maybe someone else can come up and say he can make it more compact using more optimized, lesser teeth gear. Improvements after improvements.

The thing is, there is no problem in improving, but soon you will converge to least number of improvement opportunities available. This means one day you’ll reach a point when the total possible improvements that could be made, has already been made…pretty much. At that very point, prolonging your work on trying to improve the design/process is a waste of time. If you, however, do find yourself doing such, know that you have fallen under the trap of “reinventing the wheel.” You are constantly trying to find improvement in an already saturated design and when you do find some, you realize it does not provide any real benefits to end users. Once you reach this point, it is best to avoid spending time on it and move on.

Move on to focus on other possible areas where you could innovate.

RIGHT ON THE MONEY

If my client says he needs a system to pick up stuff and thinks he wants a 30:1 gear ratio in a compact space that could act as the system, I tell him I have a better system, and not a better compact gearbox. Now of course it matters what the scope of the project was, whether it was just “Could you please design a strong 30:1 gear ratio gear reducer which will fit in our compact gearbox slot used for the sole purpose of picking up heavy stuff?” or “We need to pick up heavy stuff so we were thinking of using gears and was wondering if you can help design a strong, compact 30:1 gear ratio gearbox.” If the scope was the former, then the tone seems as if you can’t make that insightful statement since you are constrained to designing within the confinement of an already present gearbox slot. Now, if the scope was the latter, set wide open for discussion then perhaps you can see with your client if sticking to the idea of only gear reducers would be the optimal solution to pick up heavy stuff or if your better system can change the whole way this activity can be done.

The better system you figured out may either be:

(a)    An already present solution in the market

(b)    Combination of some present solution and your creativity

(c)    Completely your revolutionary design

When progressing with any of the above activities, you are no longer thinking about what the client thinks the problem and solution may be, but rather what the actual problem and solution could be, objectively.

You are stepping into the zone of innovation. This is when you are no longer having a conversation with the client, but the problem itself. You are trying to get to the bottom of it, to the root cause. It is not easy, but it is what will lead you to finding path for innovation.

If you do not have a better system, then keep working on optimizing the 30:1 gear ratio gearbox until someone else designs something innovative that performs the job of picking up heavy stuff at one-third the cost and 4x more efficiency. Call me when your client backs away from you and turns to their design. Our conversation will somewhat be me reminding you the title of this article.

WORRIES AND ADVICE

Sometimes it may be that the current technology, design, or process is so saturated and is at its peak, that only certain tweaks can be done to improve it, but not innovate extravagantly to replace the technology itself. At least that is what we know for now. These are often in fields that have been running for years since the industrial revolution, say for instance the method by which electricity is supplied to our homes. Most of the world gets its electricity from power stations which either use coal or natural gas as energy source to generate electricity. We know how damaging these are to our atmosphere, how these resources are depleting and how a sustainable renewable energy source should be utilized. That is when we have two choices: either proceed with improving current fossil fuel power stations to cap our CO2 emissions or think how you can use other renewable sources to generate electricity cheaply and efficiently.

In the world today, nearly 84% of all electricity is generated using such fossil fuels, while renewable energy (solar, wind, hydropower, biomass, geothermal) and nuclear energy sources make up the rest 16% in 2019. What does this tell you? It tells you that since industrial revolution for over 250 years, we have been moving on with the same method/design/process, just perhaps getting aware of the environment occasionally when we see that the ozone is depleting, and global warming is causing catastrophic damages. What do we do? We keep on improving our design to perhaps limit the CO2 emissions from our power stations. We do this since corporations are already making guaranteed profit from the same method, people are getting electricity and are happy, and the experts know of no other better way that can replace this means of energy conversion at a mass level. We don’t have the cumulative research, the technology or time allocated to do those effectively. We are trapped reinventing the wheel so much that it is now backfiring us in the form of global warming.   

What will we do when the 84% chunk of our source of electricity is finally coming to an end? Will we then start to worry for real and turn towards researching and implementing innovative means? Will it be too late?

I guess it won’t be too late if you take the following advice and implement it when facing a design problem: Stop wasting time solving a problem that has already been solved or stop improving the solution if it is already saturated. Instead, think of innovate solutions that have the potential to change lifestyle.

But for that, we need to learn how to start thinking from first principles. Let’s start the next article with some insights from Elon Musk.