IKAR Solutions OÜ, Tartu, Estonia
Structured thinking under industrial pressure
For teams that lead technical escalations in development, launch, and series production: three courses that build on each other, with exam and diploma.
View the sample question Read the sample ↗: SEM: Thinking Under Pressure, reading sample (opens in a new tab)
Your inquiry goes directly to the provider. You learn the price with the reply, within two business days.
Already in the course? Access for participants and instructors
An escalation in series production rarely has just one cause and never just one level. A defect pattern at the customer, a running series, a delivery that has to be secured, and a decision that falls before all findings are in.
The Strategic Engineering Matrix brings structure to this situation. Several mechanisms are worked in parallel, findings are chosen by their discriminating power, and interventions are staged by the context. In the end there is a decision the team can justify to the customer and to management, even when not everything is known yet.
SEM complements 8D, Ishikawa and 5-Why. These methods stay in use; the matrix is added where several mechanisms act at the same time and time is short. In the 8D report to the customer it supplies the content for D4 to D6: the leading mechanism with the findings that carry it, the chosen intervention with its rationale, and its verification. The 8D format of your customer stays unchanged.
For the team involved in technical analyses.
You run the analysis loop from context and symptom through findings, workspace and hypothesis to intervention and verification, and you see how the context changes a decision while the physics stays the same.
For the employees who lead analyses.
You document a technical defect pattern completely and without interpretation, build a workspace with at least three independent mechanisms, classify interventions as interim, robustness, or optimal solution, and justify their order from the context.
For the employees who lead escalations toward the customer and management.
In an escalation you separate the technical core, project context, organizational dynamics and communication layer, consolidate the case into a Decision Pack, and present your recommendation to the board and defend it under questioning.
Inquire about this course: SEM Certified Escalation Engineer
The diploma requires a passed exam; on the final day every participant receives a Certificate of Attendance.
One question from the practice round “The rear lamp”.
A rear lamp warps, and the production launch is five weeks away. The parts only come within tolerance if they cool in a fixture. In the meeting room, one explanation is stress from laser welding of the seam. The toolmaker says the parts already warp during demolding, and therefore before the welding process.
What does the toolmaker’s observation mean for this explanation?
Choose an answer.
The correct answer is B: It argues against it: what warps before the welding process cannot come from the welding.
That the fixture helps fits every mechanism that is still acting in the part after demolding. The toolmaker’s observation does separate the explanations: warpage before the welding process needs a mechanism that acts before the welding. The team looks for such separating observations before the next trial. Otherwise, it changes three parameters at once and cannot tell which one worked.
This was a practice question from the SEM Academy. This is how participants keep learning in the app after the course day.
The SEM Academy trains teams from quality, development, manufacturing, project management, and leadership in development, launch, and series production, mainly in plastics processing and at suppliers to the automotive industry. Their problems have several layers: technology, schedule, organization, and customer. A defect pattern at the customer, a launch that tips, a delivery that must be secured, and a decision that falls before the findings are complete and has to be justified to the customer.
A method carries only when the team shares it. We recommend starting broad, then going deeper, and finally securing the leadership of escalations.
We set the order, group size and rhythm with you. How you measure the effect: time to the leading mechanism, number of trials per escalation, recurring defect patterns, and scrap before and after the course.
Ingo Konrad Dentz
Owner and managing director of IKAR Solutions OÜ
Since 2006, Ingo Konrad Dentz has run IKAR Solutions, today IKAR Solutions OÜ in Tartu, as an independent engineering partner for injection molding, with assignments in Europe, Asia, and the USA for OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, and start-ups. His work combines process, mold, materials science, and simulation, plus Design for Six Sigma. Drawing on 30 years of escalations in injection molding, Dentz developed the Strategic Engineering Matrix and wrote the book “SEM: Thinking Under Pressure.” Dentz teaches the SEM Academy courses in person.
Open the personal link from your instructor’s invitation. It works on phone and laptop. Afterward you can also reach the app on this device through the link below.
The Course Register for your courses: invite participants, follow learning status, print certificates, teach the course. The browser asks for the password you received with your course license.
The provider agrees dates with you and adapts location, period, and group size to your company. The first cohorts take place as in-house training at your company, later cohorts remote. Annual refresher seminars run remote.