Detailed engineering. Why bother?

[izax1]

I have several times encountered companies that asks the question: Why should I bother doing detailed engineering? We do some simple, but logical considerations and invetigations on our system, dig into our experience database and design our system. When you tell us to spend 10k $ for telling us the obvious, it is not worth it! We are willing to take the chance. 99 times out of 100 it works OK. (And probably that is true.)

What would your answer be?

 

[IRstuff]

Is there a reliability question here?

In general, business relationships are built on trust. For any new sub, I want them to show me the numbers. Only by looking at the numbers and their presentation can I develop that level of trust.

TTFN
faq731-376

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Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

 

[Dougt115]

IF they are doing the same thing over and over with a high yield and a good profit margin then they are fine.

Ask them why does it work and why does it break? And do they want to go better, faster or cheaper?

 

[desertfox]

Hi izaxi

My answer to those companies would be:- "On the 100th time it goes wrong, what's it going to cost?".

If there is a risk of someone being injured or killed by the chances a company are taking,then surely it isn't worth taking, even if its only one in one hundred.

 

[izax1]

Thanks for your answers.

Of course, I fully agree. The 1 out of 100 failure can be disasterous! But still, sometimes I struggle to convince some of the OEMs that they are playing with the fire. Am I the only one with this experience? Once, I even heard: We don't really want to spend money on this, but our customer told us we had to. To me this is ignorance en masse! And scary!

 

[Dougt115]

Get a weekly/monthly Findings report onto the manager's desk highlighting your value.

Reliability always has this problem when things are going well. You need to bring visibility of your work to the front. Changes in design initiated by your section, field failure reduction due to your pre-release test guidelines, yield improvements, part selections to improve performance or reduce cost, and so on.

If you don't get it out there then engineering will be given credit. And you will be seen as having no value.

Been there.

 

[BigInch]

Direct them to this web page,

http://www3.gendisasters.com/browse-disaster

you must get smarter than the software you're using.