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| I worked as a Quality Engineer for a manufacturing company for just over 5 years, spent a total of 13 with the company.
In a nutshell, my job was to be a liason between the shop floor/customers and the various engineering departments. Some days we were working on more efficient ways to manufacture, other days I fielded complaints from the field and investigated ways to improve.
Disclaimer here: I was not, nor did it require that I be a licensed engineer. I was not educated as an engineer, I was recognized as having problem solving and mechanical skills that would benefit the position. I worked my way up from the shop floor and took the time to educate myself. This statement in no way places any blame on Engineers, nor does it make them any less valuable in a specific role. End disclaimer.
Having said that, I was fortunate to work for a company that recognized the knowlege of the guys on the floor. They often pushed ideas from them to the engineers whether they liked them or not (usually because they didn't think of them). They often sent new engineers to work with me to show them the ropes. The first thing we indoctrinated in those new engineers "Forget everything they taught you in college, the most valuable thing they taught you was how to learn, the rest we'll teach you." In effect we were telling them, we'll tell you what the problem is, and several solutions, use your skills to figure out which is best.
Ok, back to the original thread.
We spent lots of time knocking the engineering department, but it wasn't their fault. The former managment team kept them locked in their cubicles. We pulled them out on the floor. Showed them why a certain design worked or didn't. Drug them along for those calls on end-users and let them listen to their rants on their product and how it doesn't work how it was intended. As time went on, they learned, they adapted, they listened because if we didn't we beat them over the head with the issue.
Slowly but surely, we had fewer production issues, fewer customer complaints, life got pretty good.
While working on equipment lately, I've often suspected the engineers work on components but rarely see them assembled on the shop floor, nor do they see the serviceability of them. Other times, like the poster above said, a re-design on the cab roof made it less servicable but the cab environment much improved. All things are a trade-off. They probably weighed the differences and decided that you would like the improved environment every time you used the cab in trade for the lower serviceability of the cab roof that you'll get into rarely. Sounds like a good trade to me.
Oh and one last thing. Americans taught the Japanese the idea of "Quality". If we would have listen as intently as the Japanese, he was right, there would be no Japanese/Asian products in the US. The Guru's that we sent there were scoffed at here in the 40's so they packed their bags and went to Japan during the post-war rebuilding period and taught them what Quality is and how to achieve it. They listened and kicked our butts with it. Again, it was Americans that taught the Japanese, now we're playing catch-up. Sad....
In engineering/manufacturing/quality it's always a trade-off and you don't always like it but the overall improvment is worth it to someone whether it be customer, assembler, or company. You just have to decide who you're going to make happy this time.
Dave | |
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Sometimes you want to grab a engineer and shove
