DaveDGuy
Mechanical
- Jan 6, 2023
- 9
Hello all,
I’m reaching out to see what others think about the position I am currently in and the back and forth I've experienced in my current position. Background info: I’ve been working as a mechanical design engineer in the turnkey automation manufacturing industry for my whole career at small companies, meaning I’ve become experienced in wearing all hats from quoting, conceptualizing, 3D design, drafting, and managing all steps of projects from initial concept to final installation, from PLC selection to designing all custom tooling that goes into a machine. I recently switched companies and since starting my current role, I’ve found myself running into frequent disagreements with my manager above me, note that the person who hired me is not my manager. I would benefit from getting others’ opinions here on the forums with experience in this area of engineering
The issue mainly lies with the lack of organization & consistency, and my design efforts taking 2x-3x longer than what I’ve been used to my entire career because of disagreements and what seems like indecision from my manager. I am the sole mechanical engineer (everyone else including manager have only been software developers) and was hired to take on projects in the same wheelhouse as what I’m used to (one-off industrial equipment). I’ve become very accustomed to what design processes make sense and save the most time, versus those that don’t. A few examples include how in my experience, I’ve found a design timeline for a custom one-off manufacturing machine should be based on getting the concept phase figured out initially with the customer (~5-10% of job design hours for demonstrating said concept, functions, major component selection), and then after which the design is created and detailed based on that concept with some internal feedback between colleagues along the way (~80% of design hours), after which a final design review is held with the customer and any suggestions or feedback from the customer gets implemented prior to fabrication (remaining ~5-10% of design hours).
However, I’ve found my manager will tend to begin a conversation with me about one or two things that could be changed in the design, after which it turns into a multi-hour conversation of “well maybe this would be better, actually what if we did this, it shouldn’t take you that long to switch out some parts, etc.” where the changes make a significant impact to the design I’ve developed thus far, requiring changing/deleting/overhauling a majority of parts at around the 70-80% point in the design, and even sometimes suggesting these changes after a final design review. These conversations did not bother me early in the design phase as I’m somewhat used to that type of workflow and it seems reasonable. However, a week before what was considered a “final design review” with the customer, it will be a conversation of changing a major function, which I try to describe is something that was agreed upon earlier in the design and is good enough, and how revising a major portion based on a different idea (a lot of times has been just as good, not substantially better or worse) does not outweigh the effort required to revise major areas of the design. This has caused serious delays in project timelines, and most of the suggestions that are being made like gunfire over a 3-4 hour conversation are at least something that, in my past experience of successful projects, would have been cleared up and decided upon in the kickoff meeting (to avoid tacking on many hours of constant iterations later on). There have also been times that my manager changes his mind and chooses to stick with the original idea after all of the hours of conversation. This leaves me with no time to produce quality work as per what I’m used to doing, and what makes me feel satisfied in my career.
When I try to express how making large changes last minute will drastically lengthen the timeline, and not to mention silently experiencing the stress of not being sure if my design choices will ever be good enough for my manager causing self-doubt and mentally rehearsing arguments on the drive home, the response is that is just how the design process is and everyone everywhere needs to be prepared to make large changes to make the final product perfect. Since I don’t have a lot of grey hair, but I do have a significant number of successful completed machine designs under my career belt, it’s making me question my sanity as my manager has many years over me, but from what I can interpret they are years of software development and integration, not having a say over both software and mechanical design. My argument is that this is not parametric product design where the design phase is 8 months and has constant iteration based on focus groups and the like. This is bottom up industrial equipment design, with the mechanical design being created from scratch by a single engineer in a 4-6 week period of time which is an entirely different arena, but the argument is that the difference is negligible and I’m told there is no difference. Am I going nuts for thinking there even is a difference?
Additionally, in past designs I understand how much of a butterfly effect design choices make. This is why I try to get 70-90% of each “area” or subassembly completed before saying that area is pretty much done and shouldn’t be changed unless there is a critical flaw discovered, because of the fact that one thing drives how the next will behave, and so on and so forth. I’ve been told that that needs to wait until detailing is done which to me it is very hard to distinguish between detailing and the entire process as-is because of the fact that, for example, a simple counterbored hole depth could drive a change in a part’s thickness, changing the cost effectiveness of an original idea for a group of parts or the footprint of a subassembly, so on and so forth (I hope I’m getting this point across). This is why I argue that decisions need to be made and stuck with unless there is a critical reason for them to be changed later on, because the entire design is comprised of a fractal of decisions. This is actually the exact mentality that I have learned through my own trial and error, as well as input from the older and wiser engineers and folks in the manufacturing equipment industry. Does anyone have honest input on my situation?
I’m reaching out to see what others think about the position I am currently in and the back and forth I've experienced in my current position. Background info: I’ve been working as a mechanical design engineer in the turnkey automation manufacturing industry for my whole career at small companies, meaning I’ve become experienced in wearing all hats from quoting, conceptualizing, 3D design, drafting, and managing all steps of projects from initial concept to final installation, from PLC selection to designing all custom tooling that goes into a machine. I recently switched companies and since starting my current role, I’ve found myself running into frequent disagreements with my manager above me, note that the person who hired me is not my manager. I would benefit from getting others’ opinions here on the forums with experience in this area of engineering
The issue mainly lies with the lack of organization & consistency, and my design efforts taking 2x-3x longer than what I’ve been used to my entire career because of disagreements and what seems like indecision from my manager. I am the sole mechanical engineer (everyone else including manager have only been software developers) and was hired to take on projects in the same wheelhouse as what I’m used to (one-off industrial equipment). I’ve become very accustomed to what design processes make sense and save the most time, versus those that don’t. A few examples include how in my experience, I’ve found a design timeline for a custom one-off manufacturing machine should be based on getting the concept phase figured out initially with the customer (~5-10% of job design hours for demonstrating said concept, functions, major component selection), and then after which the design is created and detailed based on that concept with some internal feedback between colleagues along the way (~80% of design hours), after which a final design review is held with the customer and any suggestions or feedback from the customer gets implemented prior to fabrication (remaining ~5-10% of design hours).
However, I’ve found my manager will tend to begin a conversation with me about one or two things that could be changed in the design, after which it turns into a multi-hour conversation of “well maybe this would be better, actually what if we did this, it shouldn’t take you that long to switch out some parts, etc.” where the changes make a significant impact to the design I’ve developed thus far, requiring changing/deleting/overhauling a majority of parts at around the 70-80% point in the design, and even sometimes suggesting these changes after a final design review. These conversations did not bother me early in the design phase as I’m somewhat used to that type of workflow and it seems reasonable. However, a week before what was considered a “final design review” with the customer, it will be a conversation of changing a major function, which I try to describe is something that was agreed upon earlier in the design and is good enough, and how revising a major portion based on a different idea (a lot of times has been just as good, not substantially better or worse) does not outweigh the effort required to revise major areas of the design. This has caused serious delays in project timelines, and most of the suggestions that are being made like gunfire over a 3-4 hour conversation are at least something that, in my past experience of successful projects, would have been cleared up and decided upon in the kickoff meeting (to avoid tacking on many hours of constant iterations later on). There have also been times that my manager changes his mind and chooses to stick with the original idea after all of the hours of conversation. This leaves me with no time to produce quality work as per what I’m used to doing, and what makes me feel satisfied in my career.
When I try to express how making large changes last minute will drastically lengthen the timeline, and not to mention silently experiencing the stress of not being sure if my design choices will ever be good enough for my manager causing self-doubt and mentally rehearsing arguments on the drive home, the response is that is just how the design process is and everyone everywhere needs to be prepared to make large changes to make the final product perfect. Since I don’t have a lot of grey hair, but I do have a significant number of successful completed machine designs under my career belt, it’s making me question my sanity as my manager has many years over me, but from what I can interpret they are years of software development and integration, not having a say over both software and mechanical design. My argument is that this is not parametric product design where the design phase is 8 months and has constant iteration based on focus groups and the like. This is bottom up industrial equipment design, with the mechanical design being created from scratch by a single engineer in a 4-6 week period of time which is an entirely different arena, but the argument is that the difference is negligible and I’m told there is no difference. Am I going nuts for thinking there even is a difference?
Additionally, in past designs I understand how much of a butterfly effect design choices make. This is why I try to get 70-90% of each “area” or subassembly completed before saying that area is pretty much done and shouldn’t be changed unless there is a critical flaw discovered, because of the fact that one thing drives how the next will behave, and so on and so forth. I’ve been told that that needs to wait until detailing is done which to me it is very hard to distinguish between detailing and the entire process as-is because of the fact that, for example, a simple counterbored hole depth could drive a change in a part’s thickness, changing the cost effectiveness of an original idea for a group of parts or the footprint of a subassembly, so on and so forth (I hope I’m getting this point across). This is why I argue that decisions need to be made and stuck with unless there is a critical reason for them to be changed later on, because the entire design is comprised of a fractal of decisions. This is actually the exact mentality that I have learned through my own trial and error, as well as input from the older and wiser engineers and folks in the manufacturing equipment industry. Does anyone have honest input on my situation?
