Riding the wave across a flat world (or how to be 80000% more efficient!) by David Johnson

Riding a tech wave
Visions of flatness today -
See the curve behind

Tim Denhe, Senior Vice President of R&D at NI, laid the ground work in the NI Week Day 1 Keynote for demonstrating how technology, tools, and standards are used to make the world flatter; and at the same time, it's the use of these that can keep your company ahead of the globalization curve. To me, this seems like a big wave that you can see coming up behind you, that you'd better figure out how to ride, in order to be successful.

The flat world reference comes from a book by T. Friedman, The World is Flat.� I have not read this myself, but in Tim's reference to this, it talks about how the world is now accessible to everyone, everywhere, due to the availability of the internet and the World Wide Web, as well as other software and technology. In essence, this makes for a more competitive world, and it is a key enabler for the globalization of business and industry. Tim's key point however, is that it is the technology and tools available today, and on the horizon, that can make scientists and engineers more productive and thus more competitive in the global market. These tools allow us to bring more innovative and higher value products to market, utilizing the most appropriate resource (not just the cheapest) to get the product developed thus, staying ahead of the globalization curve.

Here are my comments on a couple of the demonstrations that resonated with me:

What is the biggest headline in the news today, not directly related to the war in Iraq (well maybe a little)? It is probably energy and oil. So there's a lot of discussion about where to get it and how to conserve what we have. More often, in the case of oil, the focus is how to reduce the amount of gas consumed by cars, trucks, etc. One of the best ways to conserve gas, immediately, is to make sure that your tires are properly inflated, and I am as guilty as everyone else in not getting out of my SUV to check the tire pressure regularly. There was a good demonstration showing the application of RF technology and pressure sensors to remotely monitor tire pressure in the vehicle presented by McKay Bradford and Andy Hinde. By the way, tire pressure monitoring is currently being pursued by the National Highway and Safety Administration as an aid in vehicle rollover prevention.

If you have worked in product development or if you provide tools and technology to support product development, you know that the real goal of everything you are doing is to get the product developed and out the door to the customer faster than the competition, while meeting the set targets for the product. I have actually worked on a project where we were able to cut a particular durability analysis project from one full week to 20 minutes, which is about an 8000% improvement. At the time, I was pretty smug about that accomplishment. Now, what would you say about an 80000% improvement?! That is what Steve Ashton and his team at Philips Electronics have done. By moving towards common and open technology, and improving their process, they were able to turn a ten man week testing process into one 35 minute event. This is really what it is all about!

For those of you that haven't learned how to surf yet, I recommend a good warm up and stretching session, before hitting this wave. Hang ten!