Random Question

Japher
Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:15:51 +0000

Regardless of discipline you still have multiple perspective. Within a single engineering discipline you will have those who design/conceptualize, those who build/improvise, and those who do/optimize. Rarely will you find someone who does all three. Most likely you’ll find engineers who specialize in one of the three and in consulting you’ll find those who understand 2 or all of the three and will have a background in one or even 2. Does that make sense?

Design Engineers/Design Consultants - conceptual applications
Construction/Development Engineers - building applications
Process/Manufacturing Engineers - optimization applications

I was a process engineer in the pharmaceutical industry for near a decade and I always found myself wondering how design engineers could undersize pumps or get the pipe sizes wrong. I always figure if it was for their inadequacies than I would be out a job. Now I am in consulting/design and I am beginning to understand how this happens. It’s not because of the inadequacies of the designer, but the due to the haziness of the scope.