How to be perfect 15

[frusso110]

Hopefully this subject caught your attention. Yes it is a loaded topic.

I'm a mechanical engineer doing mechanical design of electronics equipment. Mostly fitting PC boards into machined aluminum enclosures. I started working in 2008 for a different company and have been with this one for a little over a year.

We have no mechanical design reviews.

We have no checkers.

We have nobody reviewing my drawings.

My question to you all:

I need to be perfect. How am I supposed to accomplish this task?

Thanks,
FR

 

[msquared48]

Die and be resurrected.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

 

[MadMango]

Be me.

Seriously, it's hard to see the forest for the trees, especially on a daily basis. If you are basically a one man shop, the best thing to do is set aside your work for a couple of days, then go back and review your work. Chances are you will find your mistakes.

Using 3D CAD? Model as accurately as possible, section everything and check for sky scrapper issues between components and housing.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

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[1gibson]

Definitely agree with MadMango. Always good to have more than one pair of eyes reviewing. If there is only one pair of eyes (yours) then just finish it, let it sit for a few days, then do a final check/review and send it on.

Your Monday morning eyes may have a different perspective than your Friday afternoon eyes.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Ways to approach perfection:

- Never send/submit your work product right away. Even if you work late into the night, especially if you work late into the night, get the package ready, clean your desk, and get a good night's sleep. Review your work in the morning. You will find plenty of little things not worth bothering to fix (but do bother to fix them). ... and occasionally, you will find a serious brain fart that you have given yourself the opportunity to correct before it embarrasses you.

- Explain what you've done to your wife/hubby/S.O./cat/dog. Even if they don't understand any of it, the process of explaining tends to help _you_ understand what you've done. When their eyes glaze over, you have to explain better.

- Make a nice big print of your plan. Tape it to your desk.
Now go around to the other side and study it upside down.
Does it still make sense?
Is anything missing?
Could anything be removed?

- Wander around the manufacturing floor. Talk to the people. Ask them to tell you about the latest screwup from that idiot in the office. Tell them you are that idiot, and that you are trying to learn. ... from them. ... and that no, you are not willing to share your paycheck with them, but part of your mission is to make their working life a little easier.

- Now that you've got friends on the floor, use them to review your work. Show them sketches of stuff you're proposing to do, and ask them for suggestions of how to do it better. Make sure the sketches include a few obvious boners, to help you sort the real friends from the sycophants.








Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[DRWeig]

Mango took my line, "Be me."

Mike's second bullet is my method. I often work alone. Just the act of explaining what I did and why to another person is a great way to find flaws in my original thinking. The other person is usually my wife or one of my children, none of whom are engineers. I have also sat outside and made the explanation aloud to someone who isn't there. I make up questions that the ghost-person might ask and say them aloud. I've been caught having those fantasy conversations a few times. Fortunately the psychiatrist down the street hasn't busted me.

Mike, I like the upside-down thing too. LPS

Best to you,

Goober Dave

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[KENAT]

MM & MikeH bring up some pretty good stuff.

Certainly for me printing it out helps - I almost always find things when printed out that I miss on the screen.

Also being methodical in your checking - I typically check the notes, then the overall/out line dimensions, then size & location of all the other features etc. I tick things off on the hard copy as I go - yellow is keep the same, red is change/delete and I use blue if I make any comments or calculations or non mandatory changes (I use these colors on other folks work too and I believer they're fairly typical).

Trying to be perfect is pretty much unrealistic - however, being good enough is the important thing. (Sadly 'good enough' is sometimes debatable - from a documentation point of view my definition of good enough is pretty close to a lot of peoples perfect.)

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[IRstuff]

"I need to be perfect. How am I supposed to accomplish this task?"

Well, that's a problem right there; you can't be "perfect." And no one expects that.

>> That said, there are things you can do to minimize errors and omissions, like making and USING checklists. Even hospitals are now using checklists to make sure that the right patient is in the right operating room and the correct side of the patient is identified for surgery. Stories abound about patients Magic marking, "this arm to be operated on."

> Lessons learned. Keep track of errors, write them down, and identify and implement a policy or procedure or checklist item that would have caught that error. This is all part of "continuous process improvement" processes. This is particularly critical if it's some particular process that you don't do very often.

> Hold "peer reviews" if design reviews are not used. See if your company will pay for a couple of Costco pizzas for lunch time "mini" design reviews. Oddly, even free Costco pizzas will incentivize engineers.

TTFN
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[JohnRBaker]

I would add to Mike's list the concept that over time you will come to learn what to watch-out for and that while the idea that "Practice makes Perfect" may be too much to expect, "Practice" can make you much better at what you do as long as you've been learning from whatever missteps you've uncovered and corrected along the way. And while having a 'perfect' design may seem like the ultimate goal, the truth is, as has been pointed-out already, that in reality 'good enough' is often just that, GOOD ENOUGH. The difference between 'good enough' and 'perfect' can be something which is way more expensive in both time and talent than what it's worth. It's like the designer working with the expected manufacturing tolerances in mind when deciding the size and shape that something needs to be to work so as to give the desired results. After all, if the shopfloor could be counted on to produce parts EXACTLY as dimensioned/specified then he could make everything fit the first time without having to make any compromises in his design. If he was 'Perfect' and everyone what 'Perfect' as well, what could possibly go wrong?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[frusso110]

Thank you everyone for the tips. I will do my best to implement some of your suggestions.

I feel that a large percentage of these mistakes that occur at my small company could be prevented if ANYONE else looked at the design/drawing/schematic/diagram. There are 2-3 excellent engineers here, but they have no interest in working as a team. Is this typical? It was not at my last company.

My supervisor does not allow individuals to schedule our own design reviews, claiming that everyone is "too busy". He is a fine engineer, but in my opinion, has no idea how to run a department. (As proof: his fellow "directors" continually complain about him to me.)

 

[MintJulep]

If your work is repetitive in nature, "Mostly fitting PC boards into machined aluminum enclosures" then you may be able to develop a standard formula for the solution.

Otherwise, do your best as apparently it's "good enough" from the corporate view, as they don't seem to have any motivation to change.

 

[KENAT]

I'm not a huge fan of simplistic check lists for looking over drawings - either too much stuff gets left off the check list or it becomes ridiculously long but here's something for starters:

http://www.cad-portal.com/articles/art_details.php?ID=17

Having no real cooperation is a bit unusual, not making time for any kind of in depth design review and certainly drawing checking is all too common IMO.

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[MikeHalloran]

A formal "design review" is, IMHO, largely a waste of time, mostly because the wrong people come, and talk about the wrong things, and the primary information exchanges happen between only two people at a time, so having more than two people present wastes at least some of everyone's time.

I am in favor of informal peer reviews, as in helping your neighbor by spending a few minutes looking over his/her shoulder, or just discussing issues over lunch. If your peers won't do even that much for you, there must be a reason, and you need to figure out what it is Real Soon Now.




Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[Ron]

Forget perfection!

You are required to meet a "standard of care". That does not include perfection...only that you achieve what other engineers practicing in the same discipline, in the same area, under similar conditions would be expected to do.

Perfection is undefined and nebulous...don't go there.

 

[GregLocock]

The old proverb is that "the better is the enemy of the good". And of course there is always "at some point in every project it is necessary to shoot the engineers and build the thing".



Cheers

Greg Locock


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[SLTA]

Do you have a mentor, who could run through things quickly with you? Check if ASME or your country's version has a mentoring program. Some retired engineer somewhere may be super bored and looking for fun things to do, ie reviewing your drawings.

 

[DRWeig]

I'm in there with slta. Professional societies can be like an in-person version of eng-tips.

KENAT, thanks for the resource!

Best to you,

Goober Dave

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[oldfieldguy]

Several have said it before, but I will reiterate. Do the design. St it aside for a few days, then come back to it and go over it. This is when I find where I might have overlooked something or took a less than optimum approach (kinder, gentler language for 'screwed up').

I like the idea of explaining your design to somebody else, even if it is outside their area of expertise. If you're explaining in a structured and logical manner, you very well could approach problem areas from a different vantage, finding things that could be added or improved.

old field guy

 

[Kwan]

You can not have perfect work. If the company has decided to release work without a review then they should have decided to accept the liability.

 

[DRWeig]

In a perfect world, Kwan, you would be correct.

Best to you,

Goober Dave

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