Software for the parts of engineering that don't have software
Tools built out of manufacturing practice rather than product roadmaps. Each one exists because the calculation was being done badly, by hand, or not at all.
I need cutting parameters I can defend to the shop floor
Feed back-solved from the surface finish on the drawing, then speed, removal rate and spindle power — with chip thinning and machine limits carried through the calculation rather than ignored.
I'm stuck on a design trade-off with no obvious way out
Structured contradiction analysis. Describe what improves and what gets worse, and work through the inventive principles that have resolved that same conflict elsewhere.
A rattle and a recall score the same in my FMEA
They do: RPN turns a thousand combinations into a hundred and twenty values, and the threshold everyone acts on is shared by twelve of them. RPN+ places the ratings instead of multiplying them, so every combination is distinct and impact dominates by construction. Same ratings, same tables, one line of arithmetic. The same idea orders requirements: RIQ+ turns MoSCoW's four boxes into 64 distinct ranks, value first. The register application around them saves as you work, signs off a frozen revision, checks every rating against the controls behind it, and searches every analysis you have.
My requirements are prose and nobody can test them
A requisites catalogue where every requirement is a function — verb, noun, unit, tolerance — so it can be tested, taken into a FAST diagram and scored for risk. It refuses one that cannot be measured. Free, in the browser.
Structured risk management workflow
A complete workflow for identifying, scoring and assigning engineering project risk — the sequence, the scoring basis, and the review cadence. Built for real project reviews, not for a compliance binder. Free, as a slide deck you can run a session from.
Who builds these
Over the years I have solved problems across mechanical, industrial and systems engineering: machine and automation design and integration, process analysis, logistics, plant layout, critical path scheduling, and high performance very narrow aisle (VNA) warehousing. Four of those years were spent as a Sandvik Coromant Yellow Coat, out on shop floors — which is where the cutting tool work comes from. In all that time I never stopped wondering how to make my time more productive and my life easier.
The tools here started as things I needed and couldn't buy: a cutting parameter calculation that respected the physics, and a way to run TRIZ without a consultant in the room.
Everything speaks the standards the shop already uses, so a value on a drawing or stamped on an insert goes in as it is. When a model changes — a corrected chip thickness calculation, a revised speed factor hierarchy — the change is written down and the build is stamped, so you can always tell which version produced a given number.
- Field
- Mechanical, industrial and systems engineering
- Cutting tools
- Sandvik Coromant Yellow Coat, 4 years
- Methods
- TRIZ, value engineering, CPM, Structured Risk Analysis
- Standards
- ISO 513, 1302, 1832
Working sessions
The tools cover the calculation. The harder part is usually the decision around it — which contradiction to attack first, whether a process is worth optimising at all, what a measured result actually means. I run facilitated sessions on contradiction analysis and process review, on site or remote.