S6E52 Rob Donley | Kaizen, Communication, & the Design Squiggle

Being an Engineer · 26 Dec 2025 · 52m · Episode 52

What this episode covers

Rob Donley, a project manager at Terumo with extensive experience in medical device engineering, discusses the importance of practical education, Kaizen process improvement, and effective communication. He details how his background at the Colorado School of Mines and early tinkering with RC cars and model rockets prepared him for complex engineering challenges. Donley explains how Kaizen can streamline non-manufacturing processes, citing a case where customer response time was reduced from two weeks to 48 hours. He also shares a root cause analysis of a field failure involving frozen plastic in anesthesia tube sets and emphasizes the 'design squiggle' methodology for managing concept convergence.

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