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Elon Musk’s 4 Common-Sense NPI Tips

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Let’s listen to Elon Musk’s insights and philosophy into developing and bringing new products to market (from an interview by ‘Everyday Astronaut’ on YouTube at his launch facility a few years back). A love/hate figure, Musk has succeeded in bringing wildly popular and innovative products to market and continues to push the boundaries of conventional wisdom. As such, he knows a thing or two about new product introductions and has done the hard yards to get there. What can we learn from his NPI philosophy? He makes several good points which importers should think of when designing, developing, and manufacturing their new products.

 

If you prefer listening to reading…

Listen to the audio here.

 

Greetings and introduction to Musk.

The mercurial Elon Musk has experience bringing incredibly successful products to market, particularly SpaceX, which has received billions of dollars from NASA to deliver payloads and astronauts. He has some strange views and can be tough on workers, but he loves taking risks and has gambled and won numerous times by making decisions many would shy from and also from failing and learning from the mistakes. (00:00)

 

What can we learn from Musk?

First, watch the interview here:

Musk mastered trial and error and went through rounds of it.

For example, he tried to fully automate the Tesla battery factory, didn’t go step-by-step, and couldn’t get the equipment to function consistently. He subsequently had to remove it and reinstate workers at great cost, no doubt.

Did he take the time to validate the processes with the automation supplier? Did his staff responsible for programming and maintenance get enough experience and training? Probably not. Instead of following the conventional path of slowly implementing automation in parts of the process, such as automated loading along with operators working, he threw the baby out with the bathwater by removing the staff immediately and rushing into automation thinking it would yield the fastest speeds.

This led him to develop an interesting NPI philosophy for innovative new products… (07:20)

 

The Musk NPI philosophy.

Musk’s NPI philosophy that he learnt through trial and error is similar to what we keep telling our customers, following a structured NPI process and not skipping steps or jumping between them is critical to bringing a product to market successfully with the minimum risks of defects, reliability issues in the field, etc. Musk doesn’t outline a roadmap, as such, but he organises certain priorities into 5 logical steps about the ways in which you need to think in order to develop and manufacture a new product that will result in success.

Importantly, his philosophy is true for both high-volume products (like automobiles) and lower-volume ones (like SpaceX rockets), so it’s a good listen for most manufacturers. Let’s go through his 4 points here: (11:08)

1. Make Your Requirements Less Dumb.

Start by working on the product’s requirements and make them less dumb through reviews and exchanges. Musk believes that requirements should be signed by whoever writes them so that person can be challenged as requirements are reviewed.

For example, if a lawyer says, “we cannot make the cyber truck too angular as it may harm pedestrians in an accident,” Musk could challenge that and insist they want to make the truck unusually angular to stand out, so if that were possible what would the legalities be? The lawyer may then reply, “safety laws in the US and Canada allow such a shape, but not in the EU.” Musk then decides: “I want a crazy and eye-catching design more than I want to sell this vehicle in the EU, so given that it’s a large truck more suited to North America, I’m willing to lose those markets to get my requirements through.”

On the other hand, if people are not challenged, crazy requirements that have a large impact on costs and development times can sneak through, negatively affecting the project. For example, someone writes that they need an e-bike to travel at a very high speed. They can be challenged on this and the requirement can be revised to something more appropriate (and less dumb). (16:08)

2. Delete Parts or Processes, and Simplify/Optimize.

Musk believes in simplifying the product concept and removing any parts and processes that could be deemed unnecessary. This is rather similar to the early stages of the NPI process where the product design is created and the implications of its materials, parts, and processes are considered. It’s possible to be laser-focused on the product’s key features for V1.0 and remove anything that will make it too expensive or complex; these can be added in V2.0, 3.0, etc. The first version just gets you to market and sells. Its job is not to be perfect.

The product and processes should be simplified and then optimized. The prototypes are made, tested, and refined over time, each getting you closer to a final product.

During the feasibility study stage of the NPI process, we focus on the clearest complexities and challenge the development about whether they’re critical or not. Many reductions in parts and simplifications can be found in this way. (20:44)

3. Accelerate cycle times.

Musk believes that you can probably always go faster. If you have already reached the mid point of the NPI process you should have addressed most/all high-level questions about the design and direction of the product and have done some work on simplifying and refining it. Now look for ways to prototype and test faster, fabricate tooling faster, do certain activities at the same time, etc.

This is most relevant when you’re in the delivery phases (the second half) of the NPI process as your product design is more or less set with perhaps only some small tweaks and optimizations left because in the earlier stages slowing down engineers and making sure that have time to find and fix possible problems is more beneficial.

Now the team can be tasked with finding ways to speed everything up and improve cycle times. We find that customers who visit our facility in China and work together with our team on co-development get increases to speed most rapidly as they can make quick decisions on the spot about prototypes, processes, finishes, etc. (29:05)

4. Automate.

Only after all of the above has been addressed do you focus on automation. Start with regular workers assembling the product and get a feel for how the process works and any possible issues. Then over time, you semi-automate where possible and also make tweaks to manual processes (which are typically very fast). In time, as you start to go into very high volumes, full automation will be most beneficial as it is economically advantageous.

However, automation needs to be a destination, not a starting point. The risks of disaster if you start with automation and drive your manufacturer to go as fast as possible are high, especially if your design is not locked. (32:46)

 

Conclusion.

Musk’s NPI philosophy can’t teach you to develop and manufacture a new product on its own, but his points here are valuable tips for a team going through the NPI process that can help them avoid some damaging mistakes. (36:30)

 

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