Is the design engineer extinct?
Appears in Print As: Vantage Point: Is the Design Engineer Extinct?
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Matthew Loew |
Unfortunately, the design engineer is becoming a rare breed in industry and might even be headed for extinction in the U.S. A competent design engineer has one of the most critical roles in product development, but there are fewer and fewer with the requisite skills. One reason is people confuse the capabilities of CAD engineers with those of design engineers.
Design engineers are mechanical, electrical, structural, and other engineers who use CAD, modeling, and simulation tools to develop components and systems. In contrast, CAD engineers mainly use CAD to create a geometry that becomes a product. CAD engineers are essentially modelers and detailers with a degree or enough experience to let them be granted the title of engineer.
The main difference is CAD engineers use tools while design engineers use knowledge — tools are just a means to hasten the development process. A mechanical-design engineer, for example should have:
• A strong grasp of mechanical-engineering fundamentals such as statics, dynamics, components, and familiarity with electrical-engineering concepts.
• Ability to understand design requirements and constraints, think conceptually, and know the appropriate use of CAD, abstract modeling, engineering spreadsheets, and FE models needed to solve problems.
• Good structural-engineering skills and the ability to conceptualize load paths, construct free-body diagrams, use integrated analysis tools, and have experience with optimization techniques.
• Capacity to analyze and construct mechanisms, as well as familiarity with fasteners, fabrications, machining, welding, and other manufacturing methods.
• Ability to work in a team, conduct effective design reviews, and interface with management, suppliers, customers, and internal quality, manufacturing, and purchasing departments.
It is increasingly rare to find individuals with most of these skills. Not every design problem is solved simply by developing geometry in CAD. Not every structural problem is an FEA problem. Not every fluid flow or heat-transfer problem requires CFD. A skilled design engineer knows when and how to use these tools and when to use closed-form calculations.
While designers with good CAD skills generally shouldn’t be given overall product engineering responsibility, the truth is it happens in many organizations. Designers are often paid less than engineers and when a designer proves resourceful, they can appear to management to be a suitable replacement.
Clearly it is not economical to staff an entire design team with design engineers. Teams should combine design and CAD engineers, pure analysts, designers, detailers, and specialists. Across Europe and Asia design engineers in technical leadership roles take responsibility for fundamental product development. They seem to be able to calculate loads and stresses and understand manufacturing methods, CAD, and some FEA. Sure, organizations overseas still have specialists who only do detailing, FEA, CFD, or controls, for instance, but they support the design engineers. This seems to happen infrequently in the U.S.
More emphasis should be placed on making sure some team members have basic mechanical-engineering skills. Companies that fail to do this are likely to suffer. MD
Edited by Kenneth Korane
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© 2012 Penton Media Inc.
© 2012 Penton Media Inc.
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Comments
Partially True: But Question is "Who is Responsible?"
I tuely agree with you on the limited skillset of todays 'Designers'. But who actually is resposible for this degradation of 'Design Engineering'?
In my opinion, its' the companies responsible for this. In this era of superspecialization, the Design Functions of CAD, CAE [Even further...Meshing, CFD, FAE (Static, Dynamic)], Product Development, etc. The CAD engineer in the industy is by large isolated from the Design of the product he is working on. Even the better ones are limited to Geometry proposals.
In my opinion, any engineer with a degree in mMechanical/ Electrical or any other branch, with certain degree of variance, is capable of handling more than just the CAD of the design. This situation is aggrevated in developing countries with outsourcing where the competetion is so fierce, the job definitions are being further specialized, for attracting the special need customers of-course (what exactly is a DMU engineer? It is a designers job to do all the Digital Mock-ups for the product)
The CAD engineers are mostly unaware of the Product behaviours while the CAE people completely oblevious of what exactly the product is apart from criteria they are testing it for. Forget about the Meshing and DMU people.
Finally I blame the companies for this and no one else
The Design Engineer is Alive and Well - The CAD Guy is Dead
I would say the article has the situation completely backwards. The CAD guy is dead. The CAD guy is the old drafting guy and these people are no longer needed. The issue is there are many engineers that do not want to embrace the technology tools. In this day and age engineers must be competent with the technology tools as well as engineering concepts. Even the most simple of products require a person with multiple skills. Today designers/engineers must not only calculate performance of the product and model the product, they must engage customers and suppliers and even deal with production. The truth is we are expecting a single person to do much more than they ever did and do this in less time. The skilled engineer is alive and well and will always have a job.
From a students view
Great article and very informative reading from all comments also. I hope to possess all of the qualities of an engineer when done with my ME degree. Some of these traits can not be taught in a class room though. They have to be done by hands on experience and this is where the problem lies. Most institutions, work related or school related seem to be losing this attitude of having hands on experience throughout an engineers entire career. It is more of a finish it quick and move on attitude instead of going slower to learn all aspects well. The basis has to be taught well first, the rest can be learned easily at a later time if the basic concepts are there to begin with. I'm glad that I have had an opportunity to take classes that can get some of the real world, hands on training to go with my own experiences throughout the years. No offense, but, we need more true engineers in their rightful positions instead of the computer focused CAD individuals that think they can build it because they drew it. The requirements of the jobs have to be such that a CAD person can not be mistaken for an engineer. Although, this then starts the progression back to the penny pinching heros of the company which will most likely win most of the battles anyway. Thanks for reading my thoughts. Student
the situation is dire
Companies don't want true design engineers anymore because they don't want to provide the resources or time for real development. Since MBAs and accountants have taken over the executive offices they do not understand nor care to understand engineering. They set the stage for technical project failure and malaise, but do not take responsibility for doing it. R&D has been drastically cut since the 1980s, America has lost its world technical leadership, and everybody cries about trade imbalances and shoddy products, yet engineers remain second class citizens. These so-called businessmen cannot see beyond their immediate personal greed to make any long term business plans.
It is convenient to label underqualified people as engineers in order to claim to have needed technical expertise yet also be able to suppress wages. There is a major difference between an engineer and a designer. A designer typically creates nice drawings of neat concepts but does not have the technical ability to actually make those designs work. Many designs look great on paper but are impractical. I know a non-degreed guy who is always drawing ideas and even tries to build some of them. However, none of his designs actually work because he doesn't know how to implement them and his ego is too big to accept help or constructive criticism. So he sells ideas to misunderstanding management, wastes their money and gives real engineers a bad name.
I also know a manager who thought he would become a company hero by staffing his engineering project with a newly graduated 2-year degreed technician and a computer full of CAD and modeling software. Although this was a difficult project that would require at least two experienced engineers, the kid and the software cost much less. Well, the project failed because the kid was in over his head. Not the kid's fault, but the manager was able to convince his bosses that the fault belonged to the kid and engineers in general. The company decided to "right shore" everything to Asia, and after losing a bunch of money on that closed its "engineering" department and turned to playing money games. So frustrating that short-sighted and incompetent managers destroyed another opportunity for real engineers!
The only way that design engineers can hope to make a comeback in America is to start their own companies, and hopefully keep the MBAs from taking it over. You can pick almost any market because so many "engineering" companies no longer do much engineering or even understand how to do it, so with some ingenuity you can eat their lunch.
Manufacturing Engineer and more!
Design Engineers are not extinct; they are considered Dinosaurs by management. Most management believes that “software” performs all the necessary details, and only concepts need to be applied. As an earlier individual mentioned, most interviewers do not understand what they read in a resume, but look for “key words” repeated. I have attended courses in ProE and Solidworks with success in the introduction class that the instructors stated that it would be a waste of time for me to continue, unless I sought the certificate. May positions require 2000 hours of experience, which anyone learning cannot support. When one has the knowledge and skill for CAD, engineering principles with GD&T and manufacturing, they are “skipped over” for they would “cost to much” to hire. It is better to fail products and iterate customers then pay for the skill and knowledge. I do not understand, and neither would Peter Drucker!
I recently had a phone
I recently had a phone interview with a major machine builder. During the course of the interview, I was given a long list of engineering tools and software packages and asked whether I had used them or not. At the end of the interview I was led to believe there would not be a second interview (and indeed there was not). The person giving the interview never asked me what my real skills and job experiences were, only asked me which tools I used and judged me unqualified because of my lack of usage.
Designers or Engineers
Good article.
I wanted to point out that often companies cut out the designers and draftsmen completely and put engineers on their CAD systems as their only skill set. Many engineers have minimal skills when it comes to dimensioning, tolerancing and documentation required to build a product.
All too often I see designs done completely by engineers where everything is a 3 or 4 place decimal and with tight tolerances.
There is a balance that is needed.
Then I would say your
Then I would say your engineers should be ashamed of themselves as part of an engineers job it to do tolerance stackups and know what tolerance are and are not needed. I have a draftsman, but I do many of my own drawings and models(almost all) and take great pride in producing a professional and machinable print.
Design engineers becoming extinct? Yes .. and no
What I'm seeing in EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) companies up here in Canada is design engineers being replaced by design technicians.
One engineer will lay down the concepts, do up-front work, etc., and he'll leave the engineering details to technician-level specialists. I was dismayed by this at first, but technician education has really evolved up here, to the point that can act as spacialized engineers in their own right. These days, design engineers do the above and then supervise a team of CAD 'technicians' to do the detailed work ... and it works!
Design engineers aren't about to go away; they still beat technicians, generally in broader-scope understanding of what's to be done, doing project management, developing themselves to do other engineering-related but non-engineering jobs and tasks (e.g., MBAs, marketing and sales, etc.), and frequently by going on site and commissioning/troubleshooting stuff.
Cheers!
I'm fine with this...
I'm actually fine with this situation. The idea that an engineer has the responsibility up-front to develop the concepts and control the overall system architecture to ensure that it is well engineered and meets requirements is great. The fact that not everybody downstream in the process has a degree does not trouble me -- as long as there is a qualified person in a command and control position. There indeed needs to be a balance, I've stated that already.
My big issue is that companies make mistakes when they confuse solid models and detail drawings that are assumed to be "engineered" when they may in-fact simply be "modeled". CAD can be very deceptive this way. We are at a point where CAD is very accessible -- this is not an excuse to let just anybody render models and call it engineered.
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