Blog
Effective Prototype Development
Don’t Waste Precious Resources During the space race of the 1960’s, as the legend goes, NASA engineers encountered a challenge. Astronauts needed to take notes in space but typical ballpoint pens did not function in a Zero-G environment. NASA funneled millions of taxpayer dollars into developing a pen that could write upside-down in space on either side of the… Read More
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
Don’t Settle for Second Best After a design choice has been made, have you ever had the sinking feeling that you inadvertently settled for second best? The process can be frustrating. It always seems to take more time to piece together a complete and total list of boundary conditions and evaluate them properly before making a selection. I’ve often heard… Read More
A Strong Culture Brings Out the Best
A Strong Culture Brings Out the Best for the person, company, and customer Many companies are enamored with the word culture yet few fully understand what it is. Some believe culture is employee volunteerism. Others believe it’s about team meetings and company offsites. While others think coffee bars, exercise classes, and generous amounts of time-off define culture. The word culture… Read More
DISHER Lunch & Learns
The Perfect Way to Connect & Develop Teams How many of you bring your lunch to work, warm it up in the company microwave, and head back to your desk to keep working because you have so much to accomplish? Connecting with colleagues is not a high priority when our calendars are double and triple booked. We use the lunch… Read More
Manage Your Data Intentionally
Manage Your Data Intentionally: Don’t Let It Manage You Many product-related projects begin the same way. All relevant information is gathered and placed into the appropriate Windows folders on the company network. As the team is assembled, tasks are assigned to its members. Each teammate makes their own working folder and starts to plug away making progress rather quickly. Then… Read More
Finding Your Sweet Spot
A New DISHER Culture Characteristic DISHER’s mission, Make a Positive Difference, has driven our team behaviors creating a culture that was recently ranked 5th in the nation. These core behaviors are spelled out in our 12 Culture Characteristics (CCs), they’re talked about every month, and they’re lived out by our team members. When someone at DISHER says, Two Extra Things… Read More
DISHER Participates in MiCareerQuest 2017
Engineering Interns Launch Learning MiCareerQuest gives West Michigan students a unique opportunity to explore a variety of occupations, get to know a few colleges/universities, and meet potential employers from several industries. This year’s exhibition took place on Thursday, April 13th, 2017, at the DeVos Place in Grand Rapids. DISHER was one of several engineering firms with a booth that displayed… Read More
The SAE World Congress Experience
The annual SAE WCX17 event brings together industry experts who delve into the world of automotive technology. This year, over 11,000 attendees (primarily engineers) from all over the world met in Detroit from April 4-6 to discuss and explore the latest automotive engineering challenges, innovations, and futuristic ideas. Several DISHER team members attended and below are a few of their… Read More
5 Tips to Intelligent Decision Making
Relating to Product Development & Program Management How do you make decisions? Do you delegate the task to others, delay it with endless research, or maybe apply a democratic process where everyone gets a chance to vote? While it’s easy for some and harder for others, each one of us needs to refine this skill because it’s something we do… Read More
The Power of the Checklist
Relying on Memory is a Bad Strategy I’ve read a number of blogs and articles recently that have had titles like these: “Embracing Failure”, “Learning from our Failures”, “Fail Fast, Fail Cheap”, and so on. All were making the point that failure is a good thing from which we grow and learn. We are often encouraged to fail more, not… Read More