Monday Quickie - We Were Saved by an SME! What Will You Do?

​Your company is booming.  Work is plentiful.  Everyone is up to their eye balls in a flurry of activity.  As your company works through each project you inevitably get hit with an unexpected curve ball that pauses your momentum, causing you to go off track.
 
We’ve all been there and for some of us this is a daily, if not weekly, occurrence in our business.
 
Learning how to deal with the unexpected and therefore being audible ready with a problem solving mentality very well may be one of the most important characteristics an employees can have.  Yet, what do you do when your skills are maxed out and you don’t know how to solve the problem or get the project back on track?  (note – the answer is not to turn to Google)
 
Call your local Subject Matter Expert! (SME)
 
John Reh of Balance Careers put it perfectly, “A subject matter expert in business is an individual with a deep understanding of a particular process, function, technology, machine, material or type of equipment. Individuals designated as subject matter experts are typically sought out by others interested in learning more about or leveraging their unique expertise to solve specific problems or help meet particular technical challenges.”  It’s a mouthful, but 100% accurate.
 
I experienced a situation last year where we had an opportunity to support a customer on a short term, one off project, where we were being brought in to provide guidance on product packaging and manufacturing sterilization methods.  While we’ve done this kind of work plenty of times before I was initially concerned that this project would inevitably be different because this customers technology is by far one of the most complicated we’ve had the opportunity to work on.  That said, it’s one of the reasons we love working with this customer.
 
As the project came closer to deploying I realized our traditional approach to projects of this nature wouldn’t get us across the finish line, and or within the time frame we needed to in order to meet our deliverables.  After making a couple phone calls we were able to get connected with a medical device industry expert in class III sterilization.  Five minutes into the conversation with this guy, who we’ll refer to moving forward as Benji, it was crystal clear that Benji’s skills were far and above the average manufacturing engineer in our business.  So much so that he unfolded a myriad of considerations in approaching a project of this nature, of which only half of them had already been considered by my team and the client.
 
Needless to say I was beside myself with Benji’s expertise and understanding of sterilization processes and their requirements when it came to product packaging.  It’s one thing to understand a concept, it’s an entirely different thing to be able to understand something so innately that you can apply that knowledge to myriad of applications, and do so in a timely, accurate manner.  The cherry on the top here is being able to apply this knowledge in situations where there is no precedent to work from, in our situation working with cutting edge technology.
 
As the project got underway Benji quickly took command of the project, assessed the current state of the product, it’s manufacturing processes and requirements for proper sterilization.  He met with a slew of suppliers, performed material characterization studies and tested several processes in an elaborate and highly systematic process. 
 
The end result?
 
We, thanks to the help of our Superhero SME Benji, successfully identified a sterilization process which both met our customers needs and did so in a way that exceeded their product packaging and manufacturing requirements.  Best part, this was all accomplished 2 weeks before the project deadline!
 
I look back on this project and sometimes wonder what would have happened if we had gone the typical route and project deployment for this type of work?  Would we have finished on time?  Would we have met the customers expectations?  If I had to guess, probably not.
 
As a result, our choice to bring in a Subject Matter Expert (SME) to handle the work for us and guide us to the promise land was by and large the best choice we could have made.  A choice that benefited both our company and certainly our customer.

Key Take Away: 
Don’t try to do everything yourself.  Sometimes the best answer is to lean on an expert who’s experience in a particular area is light years beyond your own.  This is a good time for us to set aside our egos and ask for help from people who are capable of getting us the solution we need while teaching us along the way.  It’s worth every penny!
 
Action Item: 
Don’t wait until you need an SME to begin looking for one.  Start reaching out to industry associations, your personal connections or your suppliers to build a pool of people who have expertise in specific areas your business are involved in.  Keep track of these people in a contact management tool or at a minimum Excel spreadsheet which provides detail on each SME’s capabilities, hourly rate or cost, location, typical availability, etc.  Next time a challenge comes up you can’t readily answer yourself you’ll now have an ‘SME hot list’ of people you can access immediately to solve your business and project challenges.
 
In need of an SME?  Contact Square-1 Engineering at www.square1engineering.com to learn how we can help your solve your biggest engineering and technical business challenges.