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Engineering Yesterday & Today Update 1-18-19 This is becoming a Joke You can't make this stuff up! "Ability to operate strain gage installation materials, fork lift, simple mechanics tools and wrenches, assembly hand tools, drill press, lathe, band saw and assembly power tools." Design Engineer II - Data Strategy Update12-14-18 Far beyond the Purple Squirrel! Take a look at this job description from Microsoft. You have to think about the HR folks trying to get this right! If you can just understand it you got it! It has more Infotech buzz words than you have ever seen! No one could afford this "Architect"! Architect - Global Manufacturing Industry Services
In today’s engineering world most have no clue why the system is set up
the way it is. Most of the
Millennial engineers and managers are twice removed from an effective
engineering environment. "Okay, Mr. Know it all, what is an effective engineering environment?" "Engineering's
only product is concise,
In those days it was called “The Drawing”. No, no, no not the “2D Drawing”. I have to tell you when 3D CAD was introduced in 1982, it was the same process as when it was based on the drawing until the introduction of PLM at the turn of the century. We just delivered the 3D model with the AID (Associated Information Documents) as a paper print and later as a PDF.
I will show how the engineering environment was set up at Boeing and most aerospace companies Pre-CAD
below the Group engineering supervisor.
Group Engineering Supervisor
Lead Draftsman
–
The go to guy in the group. He basically handled the drawing process.
Why is the Lead Draftsman over the Lead Engineer?
The group was divided into different areas and a lead engineer was
responsible for those projects in those areas. The lead draftsman oversaw
the drawing status for the complete group. Lead Engineer – Managed projects in their specific area and I was quite often a senior draftsman
Design Engineer
– Worked as a designer Design Draftsman – Worked independent or with a design engineer as a designer producing design layouts, creating drawings and/or assigning draftsmen the parts from the design layout.
Draftsman
– Created drawings from layouts created by design engineers and design
draftsman
Reference Engineers
(those that signed off on the drawing)
Manufacturing Engineer
– Consulted on any manufacturing problems or questions. Their Signatures were required for the release of the drawing in a title block.
There you go, the staff of engineering in the past. Engineers did not do drawings. All drawings were done by the drafting group. Once in awhile there would be a board engineer that would also do drawings, but he was fellow you could barely take out in public and was never considered for management which was the goal of “all” engineers or a newbie, to introduce them to the true engineering process, sadly, completely ignored in college.
Today’s engineering staff?
This is a job requirement for Blue Origins.
Blue Origin is a company where failure is not an option. These engineers are
designing failsafe systems. They are not in plastic product packaging, metal
enclosures or other products that require little analysis. No Joke, this is “Rocket Science”
Mechanical Design Engineer – Engines Take a look at the website this is not a trivial endeavor.
So, let’s take this Job Description apart.
Responsibilities
This seems like a big job for one person. Take a look above at the staff of an engineering group years ago. They are not looking for a manager, just a design engineer where the basic design starts with parts.
He/she has to be a draftsman? The draftsman would be trained in these subjects, personally I was trained in a 480 hour Boeing sponsored drafting training program. When a draftsman came out of school the would be put in a drafting group and under the wings of many experienced senior draftsman. Drafting was a mentoring trade. The draftsman would draw a drawing and give it to the checker who would correct the errors. Then back to the draftsman to do the corrections, learning from every drawing. Help was all around, we wore our skill with pride. Yes, most of drafting was learned on the job and still is. Draftsman's Motto: "My Experience is Yours!" Now let's look at the engineer. Where does he/she learn basic drafting which includes detailing (dimensions and annotation) and tolerancing. As I have said this was in the realm of draftsman and engineer did not do it. Drafting is just one part of the new millennial engineers responsibility as shown in this job description. How does the engineer get proficient? No one around to mentor him/her. They are basically on their own.
I thought they were looking for a “design” engineer? Now they have to be a test engineer? I am not sure where any one person would have time to design, detail, check and release the engineering documentation than add testing of the flight hardware. I am sure there are many more engineers on the project. This should be a different job description. Just shows the ignorance of engineering management mixing many jobs.
Who is in charge of this project? This is ridiculous.
Engineering, designing and drafting, where in the world is this guy getting the time. Where in the hell is management?
Oh really, do they really think that anyone with a M.S. degree would really want to do this grunt work? A PHD? Okay, no snide comments.
Give us a break. You will be training this fellow on the job if there is
anyone with enough time or knowledgeable enough to hold his/her hand.
Yes, we knew he/she had to be a CAD Jockey too. This is the most important qualification. No company wants to train anyone on a CAD system. "They will overlook all of the other qualifications to get a experienced Creo user". LOL Just the complex constrained sketching modeling process alone of the convoluted and dated Creo is probably costing the project a fortune! Oh, that's right, Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world. LOL. Is 3D CAD Productivity an Oxymoron?
3D CAD Modeling Techniques The Worst to Best 3D MCAD Systems Expanded!
More drafting skills. No, No, No engineers did not do drawings, that is
where tolerancing was applied. Oh yes, again something he/she had to learn on a previous job. They didn't have this in college. GD&T is not trivial and may take many years of application to be proficient. Go ahead and ask an expert! Oh yeah, there aren't any! Take if from someone that detailed before GD&T, it is rarely needed in most parts.
Wow, this guy has to know everything!
More applicable experience? And Creo too? LOL
Where in the hell does this guy learn this stuff?
In what industry? Most of these requirements are learned on the job. I really think they should not give the moniker "Engineer" to a new graduate. I suppose you could use "Green Engineer" and then continue with other colors defining his/her experience the highest of course being "Purple". LOL Like draftsman at Boeing went from "E" draftsman to "A" draftsman. I left Boeing as a "D" draftsman.
Desired???
There you go. Can you imagine how long it would take to design a part? I suggest we start in college with pertinent classes to get an individual qualified for a world without draftsmen. But then you have know what the world with draftsmen was like.
Oh, oh I bet there a not 2 engineers with 3 years experience that even know what these are. No, I am not going to tell you. LOL Sadly, it looks like Blue Origins was sold the MBE bill of goods! Well that locks them into Creo forever. LOL Why MBE/MBD/PMI Will Fail Part II
Conclusion: This is an incredibly unreal job posting. There are quite a few disciplines. Design engineer, 3D CAD engineer, draftsman, checker, stress engineer, materials engineer, manufacturing engineer, detailer, test engineer, etc. As you could see before CAD it was a much more clearly defined and productive process. Each one doing their job "concurrently". Is engineering management this ignorant? More than likely it is now managed by millennial engineers that are twice removed from an effective engineering environment. Product knowledge, proven standards and Decades ago, I remember a couple of lead engineers complaining to me, now that they had a word processors they had to write their own reports instead of previously passing them off to the secretary to type them up. That is a description of problem in a nut shell. It seems that the industry is completely unaware of the value of time by the different jobs in a company. The degreed engineer is now the same as the draftsman as the secretary and soon the janitor with that last new requirement: You must be able to clean up your mess: proficient at sweeping, dusting and mopping.
List of engineers Blue Origin is looking for.
This is just
a portion of the list. It
Makes you wonder about the engineering turn over in this company. No, I am not going into space with them, but then, I would never go into space. You would think that they would set up a system like the old days with the different responsibilities delegated. You can see they have all of the engineering skills defined. But you can see by the job description the "Mechanical Engineer" has to have many of the skills of specialty engineers below. But I really doubt management has the skill or understanding to create a productive engineering environment. Engines Thermal Engineer Chief Engineer – New Shepard Production and
Operations Structural Engineer/Analyst Manufacturing Engineer III Avionics Systems Engineer - Engines Avionics Hardware Test Engineer - Engines Senior Flight Operations Engineer Electrical Engineer - Engines Hardware-in-the-loop Engineer - Engines Mechanical Design Engineer - Engines Mechanical Engineer - Test and Launch
Engineering Software Engineer - Infrastructure/DevOps Operations and Maintenance Engineer - Actuated
Systems Navigation Engineer - Senior Senior Software Engineer (Customer Experience) Ground System Modeling and Simulation Engineer –
New Glenn Senior Software Engineer - Integrated Ground
Systems Operations Engineer II Senior Manager, Operations Engineering Thermal Protection System and Paints Manufacturing Engineer Much of the grunt work was done in the past by Draftsmen. Today, all of the engineering work requires a degree. Look through the list. No draftsman, no engineering tech, no engineering technologist, no one without a degree. Engineering Technologist? Engineering Technician? Why is that? What changed in the transition to 3D CAD?
Like all engineering
companies all of Blue Origins work is based on modeling single parts. All of
the engineering efforts are to make those parts functional. Then the
documentation of the part, manufacturing of the parts, then the
final assembly of those parts. 3D modeling can be done by anyone. We have a term we
called those that did not do design, 3D CAD jockeys, they could really model
fast but had no idea what they were designing. The time wasted working with
these fellows was huge. They had no concept of form, fit and function, and
DFM (Design For Manufacturability) was a joke. Nope, I could never qualify for a job there. No
degree. My expertise is in form, fit and function design and concise,
complete and unambiguous documentation. Does every part really need an
engineer with the requirements above? Hardly
Hi Joe;
I still receive your
newsletters and tend to read through them about every other month or so. Being an old guy as well, I do enjoy your blunt criticism of what engineers are becoming, hiring someone young anymore is a real struggle. I think being raised on an iPad and Xbox is really hurting our next generation of engineers. Most have zero hands on skills and that directly translates into really bad CAD models. I responded Here are the articles he is referencing. I send out
a newsletter every other week if you would like be put on the mailing list
Please fill out this form. Hi Ray, Thanks so much for validating my viewpoints. I left the industry in 1987 when I founded TECH-NET. I really don’t know how it changed so drastically. As you know I was actively supporting all of the Boeing suppliers and things were going fine until the implementation of Catia 5 and PLM. The millennial engineer is twice removed from an effective engineering process. I was debating with a Millennial engineer. I finally looked at his profile. He graduated in 2006. He has never talked to a professional draftsman. He never realized how a real engineering department worked. They now have Millennial engineers in management positions. If that doesn’t scare you, I don’t know what would. In 2003, the 787 was still manned by engineering techs (draftsman), but the 797 will have none. It will be fun to see what happens. Amazingly, the first 12 787 could not be delivered due to being out of spec. It truly is shocking that Boeing would eliminate the total drafting and documentation control group and hand it over to Dassault and BCS (Boeing Computer Services) now, Information Technology and Data Analytics. (How obscure it that?) As for Catia and Solidworks, as you can see they have no idea what the engineering process is. All of the CAD companies are scrambling to keep the users on board. Keeping the engineering documentation tied to the CAD system is the last ditch-effort. If the major companies wake up to the simplicity of engineering documentation it doesn’t matter what system, they use. It is interesting todays engineering environment is a gold mine for great topics. They are stacked in front of me. You will not be disappointed… LOL Joe One more thing.
It would be simple to
get the young engineers up to speed.
First Semester.
One class in manual
drafting, nothing serious just a bit of the basics playing with the manual
tools.
Basically history of
how design was done. No need for electronic drawings.
Now they may bump into
this with simple schematics like floor panel placement or seating charts,
etc.
Then a class in drawing
conversions to 3D models pointing out the design process of the parts,
Simple to complex.
This would kill two
bird with one stone, form, fit and function design and 3D CAD training.
Then a final class in
detailing and tolerancing.
Then off to classical
engineering based around CAD/CAE
What do you think? Joe Ray’s truly "shocking response”
Joe;
Don’t
leave out how to operate basic hand tools and maybe a manual mill.
I can’t
tell you how many young engineers and production people we hire that don’t
know how to use a pair of Vise Grips or screw together a 2x4 fixture and
make it come out square.
It is
very scary.
We now
have 30 staff here, we tend to keep 1 of 4 production people that walk
through the door because they don’t have any fundamental skills. I
find most of the gringos that grew up in middle income families are the
worst; most of our production staff are either Hispanic or female. We
are paying good wages, just struggle finding good people. We don’t ask
much:
·
show up on time
·
be proud of what you do
·
be safe
·
be clean
On the
engineering side, I am 0/4 in the last 6 months. I am a big Mark Twain
quotes person, “Show me, don’t tell me” being one of my favorites. I
am finding many engineers so over exaggerating their skill set it is not
even funny. When you hire someone as a tooling engineer and they claim
to have design, programmed, and machined 5-axis tooling and you find they
don’t have the first clue on how to run simple 2 ½ axis parts……….I tend to
get impatient quickly.
It’s not hard to be honest, and even after they have been called out, I
offered to work with them to come up to speed. Do you know how
frustrating it is to watch someone sit in front of an idle mill for 2-3 days
while trying to figure out MasterCAM for which they claimed to be an
expert…………………..ahhhh!
Just
because you worked in a building with a 5-axis mill does not mean you know
how to program or operate it. I call this lying, people don’t react
well to that word.
I have a
summer intern here now, he’s a senior at WWU’s composites program.
Nice kid, but currently not even tape measure qualified, I need him down in
the 0.xxx inch range and he’s currently +/- 1”L.
Would be
good to catch up some day.
I have a
new potential client/investor in tomorrow, really going big into unmanned
aircraft development. Should be a fun day.
Going crabbing on Saturday, need some salt air. Ray There you go real life experience with trying to hire qualified people. I would love to see the engineering process that is used at Blue Origin. I responded, of course, I never know when to shut up!
Hi Ray,
I have been in contact
with a few others in the trenches.
Most are still trying
to deal with the engineering process due to the CAD systems.
Worker quality is not
even on the horizon.
Have you seen this
article. I have an article or two on ever engineering situation.
I think this is
probably the most shocking article. Engineering Documentation Today!
You have been very
lucky not to bite the PLM/PDM/MBE bullet. Joe
I have sold 3D IronCAD to a fabricator that
really did not need 3D just because he couldn’t find an engineer that could
read or design with drawings! Now Ray is a small company, can you imagine
this level of incompetence in a large company?
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