Hydroponics: Progress Report 8-Mar-2023

Zoe: thanks for stopping by to comment. Zoe is a regional sales manager who works for the Zeestar LED grow-light company I bought the lettuce system’s lights from.

I invited Zoe to take a look at these Progress Report posts, so she could see what she helped me build.

If I may, Zoe, I’d like to tell the readers a bit more about the discussions we had during the design and ordering process, because it’s a great learning experience.

In a few weeks, I’m going to publish the first version of the Product Development guide that I’m writing. In that guide, there’s a section on team-building. One of the ways to build your team is to select great suppliers. Allow me to illustrate.

When I started the design process for the lettuce system, I had already used many LED lights. All of them used transformers to convert electricity from what comes out of the wall (Alternating current (AC), 120 volts, 60 cycles a second) to DC current – 12 volts, no oscillation, which is what the LEDs I used needed. So, naturally, I expected to use a transformer (convert AC to DC) in my design.

Here’s the dialog – paraphrased for brevity, but it’s mainly accurate:

Tom: I want light bars that use 12VDC as input, are about 6′ long, produce full-spectrum light, and crank out about 40 watts max per stick.
Zoe: Why are you using 12VDC? You’ll need a transformer. That adds complexity, heat (transformers waste about 10% of elec input as radiated heat), cost and it takes up space. Why don’t you just use AC LED sticks instead?
Tom: (to himself) Well, I asked for DC lights because that’s what I’m familiar with, and not for any other good reason.
Out loud, I said: AC will be fine, and thanks for the help!

So, my supplier, just on the basis of a short conversation, wrung out 5% of complexity, 10% of cost, eliminated a heat source and a point of failure (transformers do fail, and it’s a bother to replace them) from the design. Pretty neat!

Then I asked for some custom wiring. My design is rather different than most (the light-curtain idea). Note that at the time of the discussion, the lettuce farm was an idea, not a reality. I couldn’t take a snapshot and say “here’s where I want lights, now you see what type of wiring connections and lengths I need”. So I drew some diagrams.

Here’s key point number two: If you want to communicate precisely, and what you’re trying to communicate is complex, you need a picture. These are the pix I sent to Zoe to help explain what I was trying to do with the lights:

Top view:

And side view:

I needed to communicate where the lights were going, what their orientation would be (vertical, not horizontal), the distances the wires would have to travel, where the connection points would be, and how much photosynthetically active radiation the lights would have to deliver at what distance from the light fixture (radiation diffuses and diminishes with distance). That’s the “PPFD” spec in the top-view diagram.

Now that’s a lot of info to communicate, and look at what a good job of delivering that info these two diagrams do!

It won’t surprise you to learn that I got exactly what I asked for. Perfect manufacturing.

But that’s not the only benefit of a diagram. As you’ll see when the Product Development guide comes out, diagrams help the designer to evaluate the design, to look at it from different angles. It’s tough to do that job when it’s all in your head, and very easy to do the evaluation and critique job when it’s on paper right in front of you.

Before I close, I’d like to make one more point about team-work. As I mentioned, I want to build or join teams. Not just any team, but great, powerful, fast, competent product development teams. What’s the best way to do that? Be a good team-member. Be someone that the other members of the team can count on to “hold up their end of the stick”.

So let’s examine the ledger balance between Zoe’s company and me at this point. Zoe put in a lot of effort – probably a few hours’ worth, at least, to help me get my design analyzed, quality-controlled, and specified for manufacturing (lot of custom wiring, not stock parts!). Then she took time to shepherd my shipment through several steps including pack, deliver to aggregation point, insure pkg got on container ship, communicate ship ID and UPS tracking number to me (once the ship got to LA, the pkg was turned over to UPS). All that takes effort.

And for all that effort, she got a $250 sale. A pittance. Why’d she do all that work for so little profit? Because her, and her company’s ethic is to deliver their best job, every sale, no matter how big or small. That’s the only rational reason to do it.

And for my part, my ethic is to “hold up my end of the stick”. In order to put the ledger back into balance, I have to do something Zoe and her company needs. What can I do? Well, I can certainly tell you how good they are, right? So, that’s one reason I wrote this long memo.

The other reason is that it provides a vehicle to explain two big points:

It’s worth building a team. You get more done in less time at higher quality if you do. Ask your suppliers to “join your team”. Tell them what you’re trying to do, and ask them to help you. Another, longer-term way to build your team is to become a good team-member. If you have the reputation of holding up your end of the stick, good teams will find you.

It’s worth building diagrams. A little effort yields big-time benefits.

Doris:

Thanks very much for taking time to post in. I hope we can continue to work together to create some great products.

I am quite gratified that you noticed and affirmed the core principle of “we humans face big problems, and we need to work together to solve them”.

I see new products as the perfect stepping stones from where we are now (econ systems, intentionally or not, are degrading the planet, and are causing great disparities in wealth distribution) to where we need to get – e.g. products that fix the planet, and are designed, built, and especially _owned by_ the many.

That’s why I selected the lettuce system as starting point; it’s a production process that can be designed, built, operated and _owned_ at the household level. I hope to identify and develop many more such products which serve to build household and village level capacity and enable the household to capture more of the benefits of technology.

Building these sort of products will serve to create a healthy planet, and a healthy economic environment for all of us.

And that’s why I think getting really good at product development is such a worthwhile thing to do. More people involved = more and faster progress.

Finally, it would be a great privilege for me to visit your facility. I would very much like to see what you’re doing, and meet the people that built your company. I hope I can arrange for that visit at some point in the future.

Nice day to you, too, Doris!