This week, Design Manager, Mark shares what attracted him to design & engineering, a typical work week and the biggest challenges he faces in his role as well as insight into the tools he uses to plan activities and adhere to schedule with adjustment to periods of remote working over the past year.
With a family background in design and engineering, I was influenced from a young age and as a child I was always keen on taking things apart to see what was inside! At design college, I specialised in product design, and then went on to Staffordshire University to study Product Design in 1998. Always looking to learn something new, I have worked in new product development in a number of different industries, gaining valuable experience in a range of design and manufacturing environments.
Starting on a Monday morning, I lead the team meeting where I run through current live projects with each team member, to get a quick 1-2 minute update on the project status against the planned deliverables & timeframes and understand where help may be needed. The rest of the week is taken up with management and client meetings, as well as brainstorm sessions and design reviews to help solve design challenges. Throughout the week, I’ll keep track of workloads to ensure we have sufficient resource and a good balance for each member of the team. I’ll often also manage my own projects, which gives me the chance to actively use HD’s systems & protocols as well as keep my own CAD skills up to date!
It’s great to be able to get involved with a variety of medical device and product design projects as well as draw upon my own experiences to offer the team advice. Having an input into progressing the company and systems is also a rewarding part. One of the important benefits for me of being a manager at Haughton Design is that I get the chance to continue designing myself and not solely managing others. HD has a talented team of design engineers and there is always something to learn from them too!
The biggest challenge is probably flattening the ups and downs of consultancy workloads and keeping everyone involved with projects that optimise their skillsets and that they enjoy too.
About a year ago, I developed a resource planning tool that shows the available design time across the team each week. This then has the quoted hours for each project entered into the plan in a Gantt format. It allows us to easily keep track of workloads and foresee highs and lows in resource in the coming weeks, as well as keep track of project due dates and factoring in expected future orders where work has been quoted. It also gives the team some guidance on how many hours per week they would need to spend on a project to meet the deadline of a stage and keep within the time budget.
On an individual project level, other than Gantt charts, the project management tool I find most useful is an action log, where any tasks can be tracked through to completion.
Last year was certainly a challenge and one we overcame through a daily morning catch up with the whole team using Microsoft Teams. A problem that would have been much greater say just 5-10 years ago! This was luckily an application we’d been using prior to lockdown so it was a fairly seamless transition for us. We’ve now reached a good balance of 3 days in the office and 2 days from home, which gives us the chance to more effectively spot problems earlier on, hold brainstorm sessions, collaborate on projects and review prototypes together.
Please get in touch to find out more about working with Mark and the team at HD to solve your product and medical device design and engineering challenges.
Design Director
Mark ensures that projects are delivered on time and are suitably resourced to guarantee quality of output. Mark is heavily involved in our design services, having a wealth of experience in healthcare devices, trainer devices, IVD’s, and inhalation.
Mark holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Product Design along with 20 years’ experience working on a wide range of design projects.
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