1988
Paravant
January came and went with my work at Paravant going well with the development and testing of the blood glucose data transmitter device nearing completion. Craig told me he was pleased with my work and glad that he had hired me and that they would like me to take over more management of the Miles projects. They had suggested this to the Miles management and they wanted to meet me, so Craig, Rick, and I flew up to Miles Laboratories for an introduction and to provide a status. About the only thing I remember about the visit was that in the hall of their facility they had small dispensers hanging on the walls that contained Alka-Seltzer which I found very odd. Were the employees that work there under such stress that they needed Alka-Seltzer dispensers throughout the building? Well Miles Labs did make Alka-Seltzer but still having dispensers on the walls was a bit odd. Rick later told me that Miles told him that they were very happy that I had taken over their projects and that I gave Miles everything they wanted.
By the end of January, I finished up a major milestone, the final testing report, a pile of pages almost three inches thick. I printed out three full copies, signed each page indicating that I had witnessed the test, the results and it being successfully performed, and the copies were sent off to Miles Labs.
The next phase for the project was production in which Paravant would assemble, test, and then ship the devices. Paravant contracted to another company to have the circuit boards made and the components installed on them. After the circuit boards arrived, the boards would be placed on a custom test rig which would test each circuit board. My team wrote the software that operated the test rig and the tests that it performed. Paravant also had designed a custom plastic case which they had another company produce. Things were coming together, circuit boards and cases started to arrive, tested, and the units assembled.
In early February the Rick, called me into his office and said that the Miles project was running over costs. I was puzzled why he was telling me for I had no idea about any of the costs, had not seen anything about costs, nor access to any of the project costs. Rick went on to say the project was 85% completed with costs 150% over the projected costs. Well, that didn’t sound good, it was good to know, but I didn’t have anything to do with the costs, and 50% of the project was done before I was even hired. Rick explained further, costs are directly related to the time the people worked on the project, and then there was me, being a manager, was additional overhead costs. I never studied anything about business, but I understood the point, the longer the people worked the more the project cost. Simple equation: Time = Cost. I needed to finish the project faster. It was later that I learned the third factor in the equation, quality.
Updated: 09-24-2023