Title Blocks - When to update the Designed By/Engineered By field

[MKPearson]

Hi all! I'd like to get some opinions on when it's acceptable to change the "Designed By" / "Engineered by" field in the title blocks of mechanical drawings. We've had an "Engineered By" field in our title blocks for the past 25+ years and the initials of the Engineer responsible for the design of the part have always been put there.

We're a small company and, for the past several years, our Mechanical Engineering "Department" has consisted of just a single Senior Mechanical Engineer and a Junior Mechanical Engineer. The Senior Engineer has recently retired, leaving the Junior Engineer as the entire Mechanical Engineering Department until we can find a replacement. One of the things that he's recently been tasked with is updating a set of old drawings for fabrication under a new contract. This includes giving the parts new numbers (we changed our numbering system several years ago), ensuring that the title blocks are our recently updated version (a version created by said Jr. Engineer), and changing the dimensions on a few of the parts that need minor revision.

For whatever reason, he's decided to completely redraw all of the parts from scratch and the "Engineered By" fields (now shortened to "Engr") on all of these re-draws now contain his initials rather than the initials of the Engineer who actually designed the parts. In most cases, no changes were made to the actual parts. In a few cases, very minor changes were made (such as the diameter of a hole changing by 0.001 or a bore depth changing by 0.125).

I can see the logic behind updating the "Drawn By" field since he HAS completely redone these drawings, but shouldn't the "Engineered By" field show the original Engineer who designed the parts?

 

[3DDave]

Which is why I also wrote "A contact person may be specified in the contract."

There's no need of it on the drawing unless the person handling the drawing found it blowing about the property and was curious.

 

[CheckerHater]

A contact person may be specified in the contract

The idea is to reference the person who REALLY can answer questions.
As the projects consists of several documents from different engineering disciplines, it is highly unlikely that one single person will posses enough knowledge.

"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert"
Arthur C. Clarke Profiles of the future

 

[SwinnyGG]

The main objective of using a PLM package is to easily track part data including the responsible engineer, it literally renders signing prints obsolete. If a customer has a print they shouldnt wonder who to call because they can simply call the person who gave them the print or anybody else within the organization to easily look up the design-control.

That's great for internal shuffling- but customers, especially prospective customers, do not have access to your internal PLM tags.

When we design a new piece of equipment that's designed to be saleable (i.e. not a custom one-off for a specific project) drawings get posted to our website for anyone under the sun to download and view. It is useful for us to have a contact listed on that drawing, so that a customer can easily reach someone who will know how to respond to any questions they might have. We have far too many products to rely on a receptionist or whomever might randomly answer the phone to direct those calls accurately.

This is a minor detail- but when you're trying to bring on new customers, the appearance of being well run is vital- and when someone calls with a technical question, their ability to get their question answered without being on hold for 10 minutes while their call gets routed through 6 people until the right person picks up the phone is vital to that end.

The idea is to reference the person who REALLY can answer questions.
As the projects consists of several documents from different engineering disciplines, it is highly unlikely that one single person will posses enough knowledge.

Precisely.

 

[3DDave]

Companies that look well run put the contact info on the web page so that I don't even have to dial a phone.

 

[CWB1]

This is a minor detail- but when you're trying to bring on new customers, the appearance of being well run is vital- and when someone calls with a technical question, their ability to get their question answered without being on hold for 10 minutes while their call gets routed through 6 people until the right person picks up the phone is vital to that end.

Maybe its the industry but that sounds contrary to well run. Supplier management processes today emphasize attention to seemingly minor process details such as signature blocks as a secondary means of evaluating supplier capability. Saving maybe a minute of phone time isnt worth lost customers, especially given the low likelihood of a cold call netting a design engineer. I sit in meetings 2-8 hours/day and know supplier technical leads do as well so I expect to get their voicemail more often than not. If I want a quick answer I either email or text.

 

[SwinnyGG]

Companies that look well run put the contact info on the web page so that I don't even have to dial a phone.

To the same point as I made earlier.. there's a difference between a general product inquiry, and a 'can I use this fastener in this assembly' question.

If we tried to structure our website with an index or something so that any part number could be linked to the correct guy to contact, it would be so convoluted that you'd be better off cold calling the receptionist.

I don't see why a contact name is such a point of contention on drawings- but it sounds like a lot of the opinions contrary to mine are coming from people who either A) are in a large enough organization that true engineering staff aren't integral to the customer acquisition process or are shielded from customer communication or B) are used to a top-down PLM integration between supplier and customer, where analog methods of communication are needed with much less frequency.

I have neither luxury available to me, which is why we do it the way we do it. It's served us quite well up to this point.

 

[3DDave]

You already have a system that links a number to a name, but leaving it on the drawing means that it can be out of date. Most websites have back-end database capability, so it's easy to make a single database edit when one guy goes on vacation or retires, rather than changing hundreds of drawings. Customer types a part number so they can get the drawing and it finds the drawing and the current person, their phone number, an e-mail, and maybe a direct message block. Not tough to do. And the website can collect which pages are visited and which drawings are downloaded and to what IP address, so that marketing (ooops, some person in charge of something) can see if there is a customer having a problem but maybe isn't asking for help.

Sure, anything can work. If all you have is a hammer, then every target is a nail.

 

[SwinnyGG]

You're again talking about resources that you may have access to, that I do not. I wish I did and could operate differently, but I don't and can't. Se la vi.