Skill Profile Of Design Engineers example essay topic

Moreover, the skill-profile of design engineers has to change. They have to unlearn old skills and learn new ones. For example, skills to convert 2-D drawings to 3-D are no longer needed; instead, new solid modelling skills, comparable to working with clay models, are required. Moreover, designers need a fair amount of knowledge of other functional groups. In order to be able to check a virtual design upon functional requirements, some manufacturing knowledge is indispensable (Mals on, 2001). Similarly, for adequate simulation analysis they need some computer aided engineering skills.

Therefore, multi-skilling of design engineers has become a necessity for optimal 3-D CAD use. Finally it has to be taken into account that, as CAD systems become more and more sophisticated, more and more tasks move upstream, from manufacturing, testing, and the like up to design, further intensifying the need for multiple skills in design. Ultimately this may 'hollow out's ome downstream functions as a whole. All tasks of manufacturing preparation engineers and of simulation engineers, for example, may in the end be integrated into the design function. As a consequence, these functional groupings will be eliminated.

Such re-division of labor will probably meet with much resistance. In sum, as the authors phrase it, knowledge-based development of mechanical products is best served if 3-D CAD, as the pinnacle of the Western management approach which is oriented towards system rationality, is combined with the Japanese human-oriented approach of multi-skilling and extensive interactions between the various company functions. Technology selection is a crucial step in the process of aircraft design. If the performance and economic requirements are not fulfilled for any combination of the design variables, new technologies need to be infused in the design.

Typically, the designer has a pool of technology options. The technologies to be infused in the new design are to be selected from this pool so as to achieve improvements such as increased performance, reduced risk, reduced cost etc. Thus, it is critical to be able to perform a quick and accurate assessment of the available technologies in the early stages of the design process. However, if the set of available technologies is large, the designer runs into a huge combinatorial optimization problem.

To tackle the problem, a systematic approach called Technology Identification, Evaluation and Selection (TIES) has been developed to choose the best set of technologies and arrive at a feasible and viable design solution. However, the issue of dealing with large combinatorial problems still remains. A new approach for tackling the same problem of technology selection was inspired from the TIES methodology and is discussed in this paper. This approach is based on identifying an optimal point in an intermediate variable space, that later on serves as the target point for technology selection. The new approach, called Bi-level approach provides additional insights and expedites technology selection, thus rendering efficiency to the preliminary design process. After describing the bi-level approach, its application to an aircraft design problem is presented.

Conclusion: As one can see the Boeing company is a very dynamic market oriented company that deploys all the modern technology when developing its products for local and foreign customers. In conclusion I would like to mention some of the competitive advantages developed at Boeing for its customers:.