Teach kids how cool it is that engineers get to MAKE stuff! In this episode of The Human Side of Engineering and Product Development, Andy welcomes Randy Mees, the Director of Design, Transcatheter Heart Valves at Edwards Lifesciences. He shares how luck would bring him to the world of engineering and his early experiences with CAD and other tech. Randy then talks about his approach to tool design and getting the input of operators to get their feedback. As an educator, Randy also discusses the need to get more young people into engineering and make the base skills in machining accessible starting at the high school level. HUMANIZING MESSAGES RANDY: Get the input of operators on your designs "The other person who I felt was the most important was the operator. They're the ones that use my fixture for 8 hours a day and you want to design something for them that they're going to like. If they don't like it, if they're fighting a process, they're not going to have a good day, number one, and then they're probably not going to have a good product at the end of the day." "So you want to give them something that they're going to like even better. You want to include them into that design process, bring them a prototype. We used to show the 3D model to them and say, what do you think? You think this is going to work? Get their input because they know it far better than I know it." RANDY: Community colleges are very good for building engineering skills "My suggestion again, because I'm a huge fan of community college, is to find the local community college. Oftentimes they have those 16-week [CAD or engineering] courses and build up that strength." Get to know Randy and what he’s up to: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randymees/ Website: https://www.edwards.com/ Learn more about our host and his Human Side: Andy Deo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andydeo/ Saratech: https://www.linkedin.com/company/saratech-inc/ Saratech.com: https://saratech.com/customer-enablement/ If you enjoyed this episode of The Human Side Of Engineering & Product Development, share this or leave a comment!