Carmi Spicer

EVO is a new pump for Ingersoll Rand sold under the ARO brand. EVO required multiple technology development breakthroughs. The full product line includes six different wetted section materials, four different diaphragm materials, two sizes of pumps, as well as a version of hardware compliant with hazardous (explosive) environments. I was the project manager from start to finish on the EVO project.

I am a certified Scrum Master and used Scrum to manage the project teams daily and short-term work timeline. I also used a waterfall style project timeline and phase gates for a bigger project summary to communicate and advance the project with the executive team.

We identified components and sub-systems that were critical to success and had the most risk. We created this test rig to develop the diaphragm technology by being able to monitor and vary key parameters creating accurate FEA and CFD models for final product development.

This is one of the first EVO prototypes designed for rapid iteration and instrumentation.

An innovative solution to see a problem we needed to solve was developing a clear pump cover allowing us to see the critical components and film them in slow motion to understand and resolve our failure modes.

We developed multiple prototypes to maximize our up-time during testing, have enough data to validate our hypothesis and create FEA and CFD models. In addition, we would have parallel paths of problem-solving in different prototypes as necessary.

As technology matured, final product design began. Here we are reviewing components with the manufacturing team seeking feedback on how to design for manufacturing and assembly.

The manufacturing team developed the assembly line in parallel with product design maximizing project velocity.

Manufacturing began during covid and our people-power became reduced. I drove to our manufacturing facility daily to inspect components and assemble our first pumps.

We also had reduced shipping capability due to covid, I used my personal truck to transport the first production builds for validation testing at our lab.

We tested multiple units to validate multiple materials and create enough test data for statistical confidence to launch the product.

On the left is a EVO prototype designed for rapid learning and iteration. On the right is the final product designed from all information learned during the prototype phase.

EVO was tested and certified for hazardous environments and here we can see a couple deployed into a customer hazardous application.

Upon introduction, EVO won 'Best of Industry' at the Pump Industry Awards for bringing all the features of the best pumps into one design.