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Thread: engineer/designer vs builder/laborer

  1. #46
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    Quote Originally Posted by ray hampton View Post
    [/COLOR]

    This idea of your do not make sense to the EGG HEADS or they would thought of it a century ago in a way so that it would be in action and practice in every factory
    I just think about the number of engineering schools where students produce breakthrough products. I remember walking through the several of the engineering buildings as an undergraduate and seeing what they were building, and they were building them. They weren't directing other people to make them. Most of these places have machine shops for the students and faculty. Many science departments have their own fabrication facilities (my dad's a chemist and my FIL is a biologist and both can tell stories about making glassware). The math department at Penn State has a fluid mechanics lab and its own machine shop for working on solutions to PDE's and wave equations.

    Plenty of EGG HEADS, as you so delicately put it, have been doing this for a while. By the way, can you do what the EGG HEADS do?

    For what it is worth, I know I am being contentious. And, Ray, you are feeling my ire because you have rubbed me the wrong way on the wrong day. I realize the point you are making, but today -- I just can't let it pass.

    Sorry.

    Chris
    If you only took one trip to the hardware store, you didn't do it right.

  2. #47
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    Chris,I hope that your day go better

  3. #48
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Kennedy View Post
    I just think about the number of engineering schools where students produce breakthrough products. I remember walking through the several of the engineering buildings as an undergraduate and seeing what they were building, and they were building them. They weren't directing other people to make them. Most of these places have machine shops for the students and faculty. Many science departments have their own fabrication facilities (my dad's a chemist and my FIL is a biologist and both can tell stories about making glassware). The math department at Penn State has a fluid mechanics lab and its own machine shop for working on solutions to PDE's and wave equations.

    Plenty of EGG HEADS, as you so delicately put it, have been doing this for a while. By the way, can you do what the EGG HEADS do?
    During my time at Purdue for my Master's, I was a "leader" (for lack of a better word) for the undergrad IEEE group in the EET department (I was teaching in the department back then). That group spent plenty of nights (some at my place) working on building a robot to enter into the yearly competition. In essence, I provided the guiding hand of experience, when needed, but for the most part they were left to their own devices (no pun intended). They had the book knowledge (or were in the process of getting it), but little to no practical experience, except what they had gained as a typical engineer growing up and taking things apart ("the knack", for Dilbert fans). I would hardly call them helpless, they just needed the occasional guidance to keep things on track or prevent going down a long road that would end poorly.

    Even a $60k education doesn't mean much when you put it in the mind of a monkey... you need monkeys with "the knack" to make it worthwhile.
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  4. #49
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Hintz View Post
    Even a $60k education doesn't mean much when you put it in the mind of a monkey... you need monkeys with "the knack" to make it worthwhile.
    I would guess a 4 year degree at Purdue would be closer to $100-$120K, not 60. Although I don't really know. One of the things that bothered me is whenever we needed another person to expand our staff or replace someone, I would always ask them for someone out of the shop. I told them it would be much easier for me to teach someone how to run a computer and do some CAD drafting than it would be to teach them how to build a kitchen, especially when ti came to kitchens that required full overlay or beaded inset doors. You have to keep in mind most of the kitchens we build cost upwards of $50K, cabinets for a whole house routinely run over $150K. These are not simple kitchens. Someone who has spent 5 years or so working with wood understands the concepts, knows the different machines and joints, which could be mistaken for "common sense." Manangement never agreed with me and would hire some college trained "engineer" who had never glued two sticks of wood together. Maybe the problem is that smart talented engineers build cars or rockets, not kitchen cabinets. On the other hand, I drove a Dodge Neon the last 8 years and there must have been a real shortage of smart engineers when that car was designed.
    Last edited by Moses Yoder; 11-17-2011 at 8:46 AM.

  5. #50
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    Quote Originally Posted by Moses Yoder View Post
    I would guess a 4 year degree at Purdue would be closer to $100-$120K, not 60.
    I was there three years and the total damage was <$50k.
    Quote Originally Posted by Moses Yoder View Post
    Manangement never agreed with me and would hire some college trained "engineer" who had never glued two sticks of wood together.
    Management is hiring the wrong type of person. An engineer is not the proper field to be recruiting from to build cabinets. It's a different skill set, it's a different mindset. I don't blame my accountant for not being able to change the oil in my car quickly... he could probably figure it out, given enough time, but it's not what his mind is geared for.

    A good builder has some similar traits as a good engineer (both should be able to imagine a solution before implementing it, for example).
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  6. #51
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Hintz View Post
    Management is hiring the wrong type of person. An engineer is not the proper field to be recruiting from to build cabinets. It's a different skill set, it's a different mindset. I don't blame my accountant for not being able to change the oil in my car quickly... he could probably figure it out, given enough time, but it's not what his mind is geared for.
    I haven't built a cabinet at my day job in almost 8 years, but I tell people how to build them and what to use to build them. To me it sounds a lot like you are saying an engineer, someone who is telling people what materials and joints and fittings etc. to use to build a cabinet doesn't need to know how to build cabinets. This is what I see all over the world, and what the original intent of the post was. The engineer and designer has no idea how to build something, yet he is telling people how to build it. The saddest part is the guys who break their back to build it and figure out themselves how to build it because the engineer/designer doesn't know how are getting paid half as much as the engineer.
    Last edited by Moses Yoder; 11-17-2011 at 10:50 AM.

  7. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by Moses Yoder View Post
    I haven't built a cabinet at my day job in almost 8 years, but I tell people how to build them and what to use to build them. To me it sounds a lot like you are saying an engineer, someone who is telling people what materials and joints and fittings etc. to use to build a cabinet doesn't need to know how to build cabinets.
    No, he's saying "Why are you hiring engineers to build and design cabinets?" I would no more hire a cabinet maker to design a mechanism. You may need engineers to do drafting, and maybe structural analysis, and maybe later on full design if they progress to that point, but the concept of hiring an engineer to design a cabinet is looney. It's not the engineer's problem that you guys hire the wrong people.

  8. #53
    Regarding those tires, my understanding was that all the tire failures were the result of under-inflation. Many vehicles become very difficult to control when a tire suddenly deflates as the result of a blowout. In the case of the Explorers, the high center of gravity could result in rolling the vehicle. While it may be true that the suspension could have been designed to reduce the chance of rollover after a blowout, It would seem to be better to focus design efforts on making wheels that monitor tire pressure and can automatically re-inflate the tire if it's low. That would save tire wear and gas mileage as well as lives.

  9. #54
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    Quote Originally Posted by John Coloccia View Post
    No, he's saying "Why are you hiring engineers to build and design cabinets?" I would no more hire a cabinet maker to design a mechanism. You may need engineers to do drafting, and maybe structural analysis, and maybe later on full design if they progress to that point, but the concept of hiring an engineer to design a cabinet is looney. It's not the engineer's problem that you guys hire the wrong people.
    Obviously you don't understand. The definition of engineer from dictionary.com that I think fits best is " to plan, construct, or manage as an engineer: He's engineered several big industrial projects" . That is exactly what I do, except for construct; I plan and manage as an engineer. In our company we have designers that design the kitchens, then we have engineers specifying how they will be built, then we have cabinet makers to build the cabinets. Our cabinets include very complex details; you will never find anything like them at Home Depot. If anyone were so stupid as to hire a college educated engineer and pay them $30 per hour then put them to work building cabinets in a market where the average cabinet maker gets $15 per hour, I would never work for them. What I am saying is it would be easier to take a cabinet maker and turn him into a cabinet engineer than it would be to take an engineer and teach him how to engineer cabinets.

  10. #55
    There's a big push in engineering schools and at large manufacturing companies to "design for manufacturing" or "design for manufacturability" (google those). Much of it is common sense and requires that product designers are familiar with tools and manufacturing processes. On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with designing a tool that does a process that couldn't be done before--as long as the product of the volume justifies it.
    Design for Manufacturing can get complicated when combined with "Design for Recycling". Sometimes, the results are so extreme that even though the end product is completely recyclable, the process used to manufacture the product is more environmentally destructive than a similar UN-recyclable designed product would have been.

  11. #56
    Sounds to me like the training program for newly hired cabinet engineers should include more hands on work in the shop. When I worked for GM, all of the design engineers would spend 1 week a year working on the lines that built their parts.

    It is often said that colleges teach you how to learn while technical and trade schools teach you how to do something. It is foolish to expect a newbie engineer to know anything other than how to figure out how to go about solving the problem.

  12. #57
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ben Hatcher View Post
    Sounds to me like the training program for newly hired cabinet engineers should include more hands on work in the shop. When I worked for GM, all of the design engineers would spend 1 week a year working on the lines that built their parts.

    It is often said that colleges teach you how to learn while technical and trade schools teach you how to do something. It is foolish to expect a newbie engineer to know anything other than how to figure out how to go about solving the problem.
    Well said, and exactly my point.
    Quote Originally Posted by Moses Yoder View Post
    Obviously you don't understand. The definition of engineer from dictionary.com that I think fits best is " to plan, construct, or manage as an engineer: He's engineered several big industrial projects" . That is exactly what I do, except for construct; I plan and manage as an engineer. In our company we have designers that design the kitchens, then we have engineers specifying how they will be built, then we have cabinet makers to build the cabinets. Our cabinets include very complex details; you will never find anything like them at Home Depot. If anyone were so stupid as to hire a college educated engineer and pay them $30 per hour then put them to work building cabinets in a market where the average cabinet maker gets $15 per hour, I would never work for them. What I am saying is it would be easier to take a cabinet maker and turn him into a cabinet engineer than it would be to take an engineer and teach him how to engineer cabinets.
    What I don't understand is why you're forcing a group of people (engineers) into doing something they are typically neither educated to do nor known to think along those lines, and then bashing the engineer for not accomplishing the assigned task. A one line description from dictionary.com is hardly an appropriate understanding of what an "engineer" truly is.

    An engineer in your field (structural) will be able to tell you if a 1/2" bolt made from stainless steel with 8% chromium will hold up a 500 pound cabinet without collapsing when a 300 pound person sits on the top. An engineer (materials) will be able to tell you the tensile strength of a blind rabbit joint made from Ipe using Titebond III so you can hang a 50 pound planter from it without dropping it on someone's head. An engineer (mechanical) will be able to design a new joint style to solve a particularly vexing problem you've had with a standard joint in a non-standard application. A chemical engineer will tell you what to coat the wood with to keep out pests and remain handprint free over 20 years.

    An engineer will not (unless you're lucky and he's either a free thinker or has had prior training) look at a stack of lumber and say "This is how a cabinet will go together"... that's the designer's job. An engineer will not know the proper finish to put on the wood to give a warm comfy feeling to the homeowner... that's the designer's job.

    If you think "it would be easier to take a cabinet maker and turn him into a cabinet engineer than it would be to take an engineer and teach him how to engineer cabinets", then I suggest you have no concept of what an engineer actually does. I'm not sure how you define a "cabinet engineer", but I guarantee you if you can turn a "cabinet maker" into a "cabinet engineer" in a short period of time, then the title of "engineer" doesn't truly belong in their name any more than someone who cleans toilets should be called a "custodial engineer".
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  13. #58
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    An engineer in your field (structural) will be able to tell you if a 1/2" bolt made from stainless steel with 8% chromium will hold up a 500 pound cabinet without collapsing when a 300 pound person sits on the top. An engineer (materials) will be able to tell you the tensile strength of a blind rabbit joint made from Ipe using Titebond III so you can hang a 50 pound planter from it without dropping it on someone's head. An engineer (mechanical) will be able to design a new joint style to solve a particularly vexing problem you've had with a standard joint in a non-standard application. A chemical engineer will tell you what to coat the wood with to keep out pests and remain handprint free over 20 years.
    While it would be kind of handy to have someone around who can answer these questions, my guess is they would have reference materials at their desk to look up the answers. Nowadays of course I would just google them and find the answers.

    My wife's uncle is a manufacturing engineer, and he really has problems justifying his salary. I don't think he's ever worked a job for more than 5 years.

  14. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by Moses Yoder View Post
    While it would be kind of handy to have someone around who can answer these questions, my guess is they would have reference materials at their desk to look up the answers. Nowadays of course I would just google them and find the answers.

    My wife's uncle is a manufacturing engineer, and he really has problems justifying his salary. I don't think he's ever worked a job for more than 5 years.
    Part of the communication problem between engineers and other disciplines is not just that engineers don't necessarily understand them but also and just as prevalently (if not more so) that other disciplines don't understand engineering.

  15. #60
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    Quote Originally Posted by Moses Yoder View Post
    My wife's uncle is a manufacturing engineer, and he really has problems justifying his salary. I don't think he's ever worked a job for more than 5 years.
    Regardless of salary - there's just not a lot of job security in the field. I used to be in it myself. With about the same employment history. I can make the same $$ working as a blue collar industrial maintenance mechanic, with a lot less headache, and a lot more security that I'll have a job tomorrow. Plus, the overtime pays time and a half - unlike the salary position.
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