What do you tell the rest of the company re: it takes time 5

[DaveG16]

One of the big questions asked of one of the engineering groups I've worked for is, "Why does it take so long to engineer a new product?"

In this case, it was electromechanical medical products, so there were a lot of things that had to be perfect.

But the engineering manager never took the time to explain to the marketing vice president and the head manufacturing guy why it took so long.

Marketing said we had CAD and all kinds of analysis software, tens of thousands of dollars of test equipment, and anything else we needed. Why did it take 2 years to make a smaller version of an existing product?

I'm facing these questions with the group I'm working with now.

What's the right way to answer this? How come it takes so long?

 

[ProEpro]

Daveg16
The best answer is to show what you did. I would bet that the original schedule was less than 2 years. You probably underestimated the work or had some unexpected problems with design, manufacturing or vendors. Then remind them of some other project that had problems because to many shortcuts were taken. In the case of a medical part find and example of a part that could not be certified. Than explain how few parts could be reused from the earlier design and that every part that is redesigned starts at the beginning.

Get management evolved make them stand up for you or you won't have an engineer department long.

Also if the project is real enough to justify the work sit down and look at the ways you can improve the schedule the second time. What did you learn not to do and what knowledge and parts do you not need to recreate. Forget about marketing’s demands and think about what you can do satisfy the customers needs.



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