Need Reality Check
Need Reality Check
(OP)
I did 2D and 3D CAD for the government and small businesses, and thought I was pretty good at this stuff until joining my current outfit, which models and makes aircraft spare parts off old manual drawings. As I thought I was getting better, I began feeling underpaid, as I have two degrees and am getting only $18 an hour just to get my foot in the door. Right now I'm not up to complaining, though, seeing as someone on the shop floor just used my output to make 13 rivet holes instead of 14 with 13 equal spaces.
People aren't making a super-big deal of it; but I don't feel the family circus I've joined represents reality. We've got one job that's a year behind and no-one doing OT to get it out the door. Early on I found I'd mislabeled some parts I thought were identical but went on different sides of a helo; QC didn't catch it, neither did my "mentor" before they got shipped. So I pulled the file on them, notified QC and copied the boss; he didn't give a *, and in fact was annoyed we'd bothered him with it at all.
I used to do flight test engineering, where it's easier to look for someone else's mistakes. But in that world, mistakes that get through cost-big time; I feel no less about what I do now, even though we don't do flight-critical parts. I told people today, if the assemblies we're working on were supposed to be interchangeable, someone ought to be hollerin' because we'd have two pieces of costly junk on our hands.
You folks out there with certs' and who've worked for the big boys, I'd like to know if you think I'm being unreasonable with self-expectations.
People aren't making a super-big deal of it; but I don't feel the family circus I've joined represents reality. We've got one job that's a year behind and no-one doing OT to get it out the door. Early on I found I'd mislabeled some parts I thought were identical but went on different sides of a helo; QC didn't catch it, neither did my "mentor" before they got shipped. So I pulled the file on them, notified QC and copied the boss; he didn't give a *, and in fact was annoyed we'd bothered him with it at all.
I used to do flight test engineering, where it's easier to look for someone else's mistakes. But in that world, mistakes that get through cost-big time; I feel no less about what I do now, even though we don't do flight-critical parts. I told people today, if the assemblies we're working on were supposed to be interchangeable, someone ought to be hollerin' because we'd have two pieces of costly junk on our hands.
You folks out there with certs' and who've worked for the big boys, I'd like to know if you think I'm being unreasonable with self-expectations.





RE: Need Reality Check
I remember when the practice was "done by" and checked by."
Now I see a lot of things go out unchecked because there's no budget left because someone felt the need to run 478 computer models for the design of a simple span beam. Then, there is the false belief that "QC" is there to find all the errors. Wrong.
Where I work, the big thing is the so-called "independent set of eyes", which results in a false sense of security. This independent reviewer is usually some high-priced hack who needs billable hours and whose "review" is worth S--T.
RE: Need Reality Check
I'm part of a team that got brought into a company to try and improve the documentation, introduce Industry drawing standards, drawing checking etc and it's an up hill battle.
Just when we think we're making ground something will come up and it feels like we're back to square one.
I applaud you for having standards and wanting to stick to them, sadly there seem too many people in Engineering that don't feel the same. I just hope none of them are in safety critical areas but I know they must be.
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we have great draftsmen at my current firm who catch all the mistakes and even question the completely logical designs. that's good, because it keeps you on your toes.
unfortunately, there are ton of companies who are more about "output and profit" than churning out quality work.
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Bridgebuster's concern about oversimulation brings to mind a recent Air & Space article on wind tunnels. Some fruitcakes in Scandinavia went totally CFD with their biz jet design. Result: transonic stall, one dead pilot. Hard to imagine in this day and age, or maybe not.
As to why things get like this: in our case, our owner know nothing about the industry, just counts the beans. Thus he doesn't realize his VP relishes jerking workers and clients around rather than taking stock of mistakes and seeking help before moving forward. VP says it's the last job he'll get at his age - which he's safe to say, seeing he's got the bucks to buy horses and take family vacations to Mexico, Panama, and Costa Rica. What a life!
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When you start looking at it, any item that is engineered could always be engineered some more. There is simply no end to the amount of analysis or testing that COULD be done. And what IS done is usually limited in some way by customer requirements, by law, by company policy, etc.
You might compare your house to, say, the space shuttle or a nuclear power plant. Compared to them, your house is woefully and totally subpar and inadequate. But if the same degree of care went into your house that went into a nuke plant or the shuttle, you simply couldn't afford it.
Even work that is more or less identical in nature can be vastly different depending on who does it. If the Corps of Engineers contract for an outhouse, you're going to have a spec book 3" thick to go with it. Someone coming out of that culture is probably going to feel that normal commercial or municipal construction is underdone.
I say all this, not to justify what your company is doing (which I can't very well evaluate) but to point out that going from a big company to a small one, or up or downscale in the world of technology, is going to bring some changes, that are not necessarily associated with subpar work when compared to other similar companies.
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Swivel63 - you've never been to my office.
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It is a fact that things are checked less than they used to be, but if a company has spent many thousands of their hard earned cash on hardware, modelling software, FEA software should they not expect better results than someone with a board, a pencil and a log book?
There seems to be complaints in equal quantities on here that complain let the engineers do their jobs and stop interfering and no one checks my work or tells me what to do, can you have it both ways?
Whilst more can always be done to improve quality it comes at a cost, as JStepen says in his excellent post to the point where it is too expensive, to produce the best product in the world that no one buys is not good business.
Whilst things are checked less that they used to be I know the car I drive is safer, more economical, cleaner, has more extras than the one I drove ten years ago, why is that?
As for the I emailed my boss and he was annoyed, is it not possible that he might have something more important to deal with, how far do you go, email him to tell him there is no paper in the toilet? Whilst we are on the subject why should he not have enough money to own a horse and take holidays abroad, if he is nearing retirement the chances are he has taken huge personal risks and worked the sort of hours most people would not dream of to get where he is.
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I like your opening thought. In my industry sector (power generation and transmission) our worth to the company and to our competitors is what is driving up the salaries of the engineers. We are worth more because there are fewer of us and our skills are in increasingly short supply. Our worth is in our scarcity.
I wish someone would check my work more often. Some is checked but not as often as I would like. Much of it there is no one on site who can check it thoroughly because I'm the company specialist in certain areas and if I make a mistake in the detail then it tends to slip through. If we had more and better educated engineering staff then that would not be the case but our manning level is pretty stretched. I suspect we are not unusual in that regard.
I agree with your analysis of what a good boss might reasonably expect to have to show for his efforts, but I have trouble reconciling that with a VP displaying the characteristics cadengr mentioned. Bosses who display those characteristics usually end up in bankruptcy court or working for an outfit like Enron.
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Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...
RE: Need Reality Check
If we just think about crash, in our lifetimes we've gone from no crash testing at all, to (initially) quasi static analysis and lots of prototype teste, to the point now where crash testing is probably 10% of the development task. The number of physical tests may have dropped off slightly, but that is because the variability can be established in FEA.
Similarly other aspects of cars are tested according to an ever growing stack of requirements. It is rare for a test to be dropped, unless it is directly superceded, even when the original logic for the test is forgotten.
Cheers
Greg Locock
Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: Need Reality Check
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Cheers
Greg Locock
Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: Need Reality Check
Scotty I do not know the VP in question and he may be a “bad un” but the chances are every day he has to make decisions like how do I solve the problem that this project is running one year over, if I pay overtime the company will go bust if I do not I will lose the respect of my client? This is causing me a major problem with cash flow, I cannot afford to fund the next project, how do I overcome that? I have all these new laws coming in how do I implement them? I know if I do not implement new systems, practices and equipment a few years down the line we will lose our competitive edge, but if I do it now the company will go bust, how do I solve this problem?
On top of this of course he has the day to day running of the company to contend with, if you then got an email from an employee saying I named a part wrong and I am not happy about it how would you react? To paraphrase the OP who is jerking who about?
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In essence we build a prototype to check the calculations - to my mind that is probably the major difference in attitude between exempt and code-following industries.
Cheers
Greg Locock
Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: Need Reality Check
If the VP or owner was solving those problems then yes, he might be worth the money. In this case he seems to have failed to solve them - a project running a year behind schedule?? - and that makes him a net drain on the company instead of a net contributor. As a VP it is a miracle he is still employed; as an owner, well maybe he is in the wrong business.
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Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...
RE: Need Reality Check
Precisely why I get paid $18 per hour:
The medical condition that stopped my DOD career mandates part-time hours, and knowingly slims the pickins'. Once I got my A.S. in CAD to go with my B.S., a my friendly former colleague subcontracted me at $30/hour. The VP and program manager who hired me on only cared about my performance; but the P who wouldn't trust them saw me as a potential liability, even though I went from SolidWorks to Inventor in under a week and handed him my completed work on the way out his door (done twice because his people kept "jerking me around" in his words). State Rehab then advised me to take whatever to get a foot back in the door and wait a year before looking for a raise. So, with that great confidence bust, I settled on the next offer, especially on seeing the differences in interpreting prints from the fifties on microfiche that are barely readable.
And having quickly got comfy with it - a few mistakes or not - I've been kicking myself ever since, especially since what I did for the last dork was far easier. The first thing my current boss told me on the phone BEFORE ever seeing me or my quals was, "You are out of your league," some stuff about how his own failed entrepreneurship, and some garbage about forming a second shift. That marked him as an arrogant, butt-kissing liar; but so was/is Donald Trump. So with all the red flags, I bit the bullet and swallowed, especially since temp agencies were offering me $2 less.
Your argument about my worth to this fellow is actually correct. I can take a few machinist's insults; but it's quite another thing when a boss who admits to knowing nothing about your job knows nothing about your capabilities either, like he never really read your resume. As this bozo took pleasure in "e-du-cat-ing" me on helping his wife order sheet stock, he told me if I didn't get it down, I'd NEVER have an engineering job, "not to scare you, but with me or anyone else!" I've refrained more than once from telling him about multi-million-dollar project I ordered parts for, helped design, and managed with DOD 'til this body had had enough.
His other engineers are actually techs, but they've been around: one worked on the SR-71, and another actually graduated airframe/powerplant school with the boss. Still, they take similar crap, save for the MasterCAM guru, probably because my boss thinks CNC is "easier" for him to relate to. Never mind that he never misses a chance to say he's just an old-fashioned guy who hates e-mail for all kinds of reasons. Computers, save for his vacation pictures, are a necessary evil (his son who runs the shop floor doesn't even own one); thus, so are the engineers who use them. We model something, he changes the plan and deviates from print a week or two later, and we change the models to redo the drawings. The schedule slides, so he tells us he's going to hire another guy just to do pencil sketches. ("I'll get you a pencil with an eraser on it!") Someone tell me how to export a pencil sketch as a DXF for laser cutting.
Where I disagree with you, ajack1, is in giving him the benefit of the doubt for the decisions he has to make, though I'd rather agree. Interestingly, after this bully with a history of manhandling and outbursts - including giving me a good whack once - tried make me his $18/hour project manager, I had a nice sit-down in his office. Two words still ring in my ears from all his offensive self-defense: "BULL----" and "BALLS." The latter as in, "You're given A,B,D,E, but no C - what do you do? [cheshire grin] Do you have the BALLS to make these kinds of decisions?" And I told him that for much of my government time I indeed had "the BALLS" under similarly difficult circumstances; he has never bothered to ask doing what. (I did get an apology for hitting me; and even that was said in the most demeaning way.)
And BTW, regarding those mismarked parts, I discussed it with QC in person, and copied the boss an e-mail for QC and the customer, only because he wouldn't be in the next day for me to discuss my mistake to his face. I work to keep him from getting blindsided from someone else, and he complains no one "signed" the printout, though no other engineer there has my initials. No BALLS - whatever.
He may have well put in his OT as a foreman before joining and taking over this company with his BALLS and saving it from bankruptcy; supposedly, he hadn't vacationed for a year while his crane project fell a year behind and the company moved. Well heck, I obviously should have taken more vacation from Uncle Sam, but my heart's not bleeding for him. Yes, he puts in a solid 40 hours from 5 to 3 with short Fridays; then he with $80K/year and his wife with whatever are gonzo. No, it's not a lot for running a company of 50-odd people; which probably says a couple of things.
Anyway, since his son doesn't work Mondays, the shop is headless one day a week; on Fridays, no one answers the phone after 10, as his daughter instructed me. There effectively is no one above, nor below him to help run the show. (The new assistant, like the pencil-CAD guy, my own phone, and my own key to the building has yet to show up.) I've never heard of this with someone who runs his "own" business, let alone his "own" government project, who's not of retirement age with his butt on the line. If your ship is headed the wrong way, you normally either have to change course, or borrow/hire the resources to help you do so.
I think I've said about enough for tonight.
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Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...
RE: Need Reality Check
As I have migrated through different environments in aviation: military aviation, military flight test, general aviation, commercial passenger aviation, commuter ops, cargo ops, etc; I can tell you from first hand experience there are underlying fact patterns that are very different in each environment.
For example, what would be an intolerable tool control violation in a military hangar would be a don’t care in a commercial passenger aircraft hangar environment. It’s not that commercial is less safe, on the contrary. It’s just a different environment with a different culture. There are a huge number of underlying procedures, environment factors, operational factors, and human factors that are different.
In a new environment, unless you are very certain you know of something happening on specific aircraft that could, with a very high probability, induce a failure mode that will make it impossible to control or land that aircraft, I’d say just back off, do your job, and try to educate yourself on your new situation.
People that focus on being self appointed QC inspectors instead of doing what they are assigned to do are not generally all that helpful.
Most aircraft maintenance parts systems have some type of acceptance inspection requirements for parts coming in the door.
In my own environment for third party manufactures parts approved under our approval authority (FAA part 121 operation), the part/kit must match the DWG/Rev that it was made to or it’s rejected at receiving. This is very typical and happens a lot.
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Really?
Whatever the environment, if I catch my error even once the part's off my hands, if it might lose us a customer, safety-critical or not, I'm obliged to act on it. In this case, a call would have come months later from Europe via our broker saying, all the parts you delivered are usable, but half have the wrong dash number, and are actually mirror-image to what we're putting on that side of the helo and not what we paid for.
Although I take responsibility, the chain is also complicit. My error was caught by our underutilized, often-ignored QC expert on a reorder, for different dash numbers, because my drawings next went to him like they should have, so he could survey the job and discuss it directly with me and other engineers before manufacture.
This logical chain of events wasn't in place when I'd come aboard three months earlier; no, I was told then to hand my drawings directly to the boss' wife, who only does material purchasing with a near-zero technical background. The handoff sequence was changed between the two jobs, with no particular reason cited: pretty odd as my boss has worked there for five years and our QC guy for three. The latter frequently isn't consulted by the family on errors and QC issues, as they circle the wagons and we have people who don't know degrees from minutes trying to solve things without him.
Again, the common theme is lack of leadership from the top, and the top's disregard for others with valuable competencies outside the scope of his own experience.
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I'm not implying quality issues should be ignored.
I believe that ownership for quality is important and people that think something is wrong should notify their supervisor.
I have also seen people spend a lot of time on their hobby agenda because it's more exciting or interesting than what they are assigned to do.
There is usually someone who's job it is to prioritize and correct systematic QC problems.
It’s a business reality that they will have finite resources to work with.
The issue that looms large to the person in the drafting group may or may not be the number one QC priority for the organization as a whole.
There is a division of labor and responsibilities in every organization.
Just because you don’t understand the priorities doesn’t mean they are incorrect.
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“I have also seen people spend a lot of time on their hobby agenda because it's more exciting or interesting than what they are assigned to do.”
I believe it harbors a regrettable lack of respect for someone else's viewpoint.
Most people are motivivated to see the right thing happen.
Very often different people with different experience levels and from different viewpoints in an organization will assign different priority valuations to a condition or incident.
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It appears you've read little of my posts or this thread. Right now my priority is finding a new employer who DOES NOT run his show like a hobby. But if you need a new hobby in aerospace, there'll be a seat waiting for you, if there's still a company.
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You are correct. I tend to speed read a lot of the non technical posts.
I responded to your OP, but missed the fact you were concerned that no one was too concern over your own mistake!
Had I realized that, I wouldn't have responded at all.
Good luck with what ever you do.
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As an example if something is made but doesn’t work for the intended task it’s typically for one of 2 reasons.
A. The design is inadequate/doesn’t work.
B. It wasn’t made properly to the design.
A. is the realm of the Engineers that design, analyze & test the design.
B. is the realm of Quality Control and the people making it.
No matter how good the basic design if it’s poorly made it won’t work. Likewise no matter how skilled/committed the manufacturing staff and how rigorous the QC department if the basic design is inadequate it wont work either.
The same is analogous to drawing creation/design communication with A being the designers/draftsmen/engineer creating the drawing & doing calcs to support it and B being Drawing Check or the person checking calcs. In fact I’ve heard of companies/government contracts where the Drawing check had to be under quality rather than design!
Drawing mistakes (or errors in analysis, or even lack of analysis) that don’t get spotted during check will (if they are serious) typically get spotted at some point during manufacture or testing. Which is more cost efficient, finding & correcting the mistake at the design stage, prototype/testing stage or full scale production?
When you have limited resource you need to balance the effort between creating the design and checking the design. Running FEA on a simple beam is maybe an example of spending more time than necessary on A, perhaps at the expense of B.
Relying solely/primarily on testing to find mistakes in designs is typically expensive and inefficient.
I’m having trouble really being clear but the point I’m trying to make is that not only must the design be good but the communication of the design must be good. Drawing check helps with the communication of the design, cross checking of calculations/models etc helps with the design. If you eliminate either you’re facing a less efficient design/manufacture process. Given the effort many companies make to improve Quality, typically as regards manufacturing I find it strange that they now spend less time ensuring quality in design communication and sometimes in design itself.
While I know it’s common these days I doubt the integrity (not sure that’s the right word) of any company that doesn’t have some design checking process.
CAE when used correctly has reduced the chance of certain types of errors, for instance most 3D CAD packages have some kind of retrieve dimension function that retrieves the model dimension so missing dimension shouldn’t be an issue. However, they don’t (at least that I’m aware of) check the basic dimensioning scheme, or the tolerance scheme or that all the required notes are there… GIGO (Garbage in Garbage out) needs to be kept in mind when relying on computers.
(sorry longer and more rambling than planned
Good luck with the job search!
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I just get tired of people downplaying design checking and saying that with CAD/CAE it's not necessary any more.
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On the bright side, there are CAD packages out there now that can check the proper use of GD&T, if not the viability.
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That isn't a broken record.
I think I mentioned before that when I worked for CAT, they had done studies that quantified the cost of bad/incorrect drawings to each production unit. CAT, as you can imagine, have extensive (and I mean extensive) specifications and design procedures handed down thru generations of engineers. I forget the figures (exactly), but the cost of rework etc per machine ran into the hundreds of dollars range (i believe $550). Across the entire range of machines that they produce, that is quite a signuificant total.
Their solution was for each design facility there had to be design checker....and no drawing could be production released without the design check and subsequent correction being completed. The point CAT mad was that even though this wouldn't solve all problems now, in the long term engineers would produce more robust drawings and eventually the problem would begin to minimise
Outcome for Enginners....grab socks and pull very hard....pressure is a wonderful motivator
Kevin Hammond
Mechanical Design Engineer
Derbyshire, UK
RE: Need Reality Check
My checker has a note written on the white board by his desk:
Perhaps the thing I find hardest working in an environment where they don't have good engineering standards etc is not letting myself slip to their level.
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I love that, couldn't sum the argument up in a more sucinct manner. Star for you.
I've had similar experiences where I have been working with companies you are/were very poor/pathetic when it came to checking engineer's drawings. It is all well and grand getting drawings out the door quickly, but once you bypass the checking phase usually all hell breaks loose.
The best way to keep people interested in checking is to keep a log of parts that don't fit/break etc that either get rejected by QC or have to be repaired in the field. Relate that to cost and most managers suddening get very interested in the checking process (especially when their manager starts to use his/her big size 12's)
But never, ever fall to their level, always remember that if you are the one who is trying to improve the dept., you are the one with your head above the semerage line....
Kevin Hammond
Mechanical Design Engineer
Derbyshire, UK