Rubber Stamping on ECO Reviews

[LONDONDERRY]

Greetings:
I work as a mechanical (only mechanical) engineer for a rather large company, that is more heavy on the se and program manager side. Recently we implements Agile PLM for our ECO workflow process. I helped define two workflows one for engineering prototype development and another for production release. The system came on line earlier this week, which drew some excitement. However when I sent an ECO out for review, which was engineering manager, manufacturing engineer, PM, director of PM, the results where nothing more than a everyone just rubber stamping the ECO with no one looking at the drawings or BOM's within 15 minutes after I sent the ECO out. Needless to say I was appalled by this, and when I asked some of them if they would like their roll to be changed from a reviewer to a observer or notified the answers, which weren't surprising;, was "No I want to be a reviewer because I pay the bills around here", or "I want to be a reviewer, but I don't have the time to look at drawings or BOM's I just assume you guys did your job." The list of people I was given to me to be part of the review cycle. So now my question I'm sure some of you have seen this before and I want to email these on the importance of the reviewing how should I get my point across I have some leeway to make changes


Regards
Frank

 

[KENAT]

With the possible exception of the engineering manager they probably aren't the people to be doing a detailed drawing review.

One would hope the Manufacturing engineer would at least be somewhat interested in the actual changes being made be it to BOM structure or how parts are made...

Maybe there needs to be a step before the formal ECO where someone 'checks' the ECO & drawings?

Or maybe it's a sign of their great faith in you?

At my aerospace/defense employer our process only applied to the drawing pack however, the drawings & 'ECO' got checked by a nominated 'checker', then they went to the stress guy for approval then they went to the technical director.

All 3 of them took it fairly seriously. Don't get me wrong, for non structural components the structural guy didn't spend as much time on it etc. but I got drawings back from all 3 levels of approval on occasion.

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[MikeHalloran]

At one of my first jobs, I checked hydraulic system drawings for pretty big boats.

Every so often, way down at the far end of a 30 foot long blueprint, I'd find the image of an overlay someone had taped on the mylar, comprising a cartoonish image of a large human foot, labeled:
CHECKER TRAP
DIMENSION B = 1 foot

I always found it and marked it for deletion on the check prints. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't done so.

But the thought occurs, that if you appended something like "Frank gets a big raise" to a print sent around with an ECN for review, and no one responded, you would have reason to call a meeting to review exactly what the word "review" might mean in local context.

... maybe you should ask your boss to call the meeting.

I personally would ask the company counsel to call the meeting, since (s)he's the one who will be trying to defend your managers for shirking their responsibility when there's a big 'oops'.







Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA