David Genter is a Design Engineer, spending more than 36 years at Cummins in many engineering-based roles including leading the design of two world-class diesel engines – QSK60 and QSK95. He has spent the last 25 years creating and refining processes to efficiently design products, and to migrate “design thinking” to occur at the system-level. David received a Chairman’s Award for creation and implementation of his methodologies, which have been successfully applied to all realms of the New Product Development process. Most recently, his methodologies were applied to a program he led to assess the viability of various electrified (or decarbonized) architectures, and to resolve complex field warranty issues, both of which received Cummins Business Impact Awards. David is currently leading Design for Sustainability and promoting such approaches within the industry. He has more than 80 patents, and a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Tech.
Shafaat and Kenley in 2015 identified the opportunity to improve System Engineering Standards by incorporating the design principle of learning. The System Level Assessment (SLA) Methodology is an approach that fulfills this need by efficiently capturing the learnings of a team of subject matter experts in the early stages of product system design. To evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, the methodology has been successfully applied within each realm of the New Product Introduction process, including most recently to a Technology Development program (in the earliest stages of the design process) to assess the viability of various electrification technologies. The SLA-derived approach taken on this program showed the potential to reduce the level of redesign work, while significantly increasing the number of invention disclosers compared to an equivalent technology developed using traditional methods. Using the SLA method yielded 170% more invention disclosures, of which more than 40% were converted to patent filings.
An understanding of the System-Level Assessment Methodology and how it promotes knowledge capture and a requirements-led approach efficiently using subject matter experts in the early stages of product system design.
