3 ms·

>but if you actually wanted something done, ultimately you took your drawings down to the floor and found the longest, grayest beard you could and bent the knee

>but if you actually wanted something done, ultimately you took your drawings down to the floor and found the longest, grayest beard you could and bent the knee until they agreed to make everything actually work. >Fast forward to my first manufacturing job, I was tasked to improve a process, so I went out on the shop floor, started talking to the line guys, and then was promptly scolded by another engineer who told me, and I quote, "they're just manufacturing guys, don't give them enough rope to hang themselves with". That is a bad way to view things, from both directions. The line guys definitely have good insights on how to improve things but sometimes their idea of improvement is to "make my job better at the expense of others" and they also often lack the overarching view so they will aim for a local maximum. Saying that engineers are just doing math all day just relegate the job to a glorified excel data entry job. Engineers should be doing a lot more from documenting current conditions to looking at how to use new technology to improve the process. That said, I agree that it looks like management did not listen to anyone in the factory.

jacquesm 3y ago
The engineers know the materials from a numerical point of view, and can calculate to some degree what those materials will do given their dimensions, material grade and so on. But the line guys work with the actual material and know it from an entirely different perspective, how it can be worked into those shapes and what kind of operations will weaken or strengthen an otherwise identical looking part. Forged tools are especially tricky because forging steel is almost as much an art as it is a science due to all kinds of transient effects, you're working the steel into its final shape while it is hot enough to be ductile but not so hot that it loses shape. The difference between a bad forging and a good forging can be hard to tell when the part is done without destructive testing of some sort. For tools this is critical. The amount of force I can put on a wrench is such that a bad forging will break which will likely lead me to injure myself. But with a good quality wrench I will know I'm safe and will be confident to apply force close to the maximum of what such a wrench will be able to provide (limited by my strength and the length of the wrench as a multiplier resulting in substantial torque on the bolt or nut). Typically the way the bolt would fail is that it becomes semi liquid and this is a slow process so you have some warning to reduce pressure. But a forging that breaks will just snap and all of that force is released at once. Great way to hurt yourself. So the quality of these forgings is very important and I'd much rather entrust my safety to the people that actually touch the metal than just to the engineers, who may be able to optimize for cost but who don't actually have much (sometimes no) shop experience. Knowing how to make something in theory and actually making it in practice can be quite far apart, even on something as mundane as what ultimately is a chunk of metal.

jacquesm 3y ago

The engineers know the materials from a numerical point of view, and can calculate to some degree what those materials will do given their dimensions, material grade and so on. But the line guys work with the actual material and know it from an entirely different perspective, how it can be worked into those shapes and what kind of operations will weaken or strengthen an otherwise identical looking part. Forged tools are especially tricky because forging steel is almost as much an art as it is a science due to all kinds of transient effects, you're working the steel into its final shape while it is hot enough to be ductile but not so hot that it loses shape. The difference between a bad forging and a good forging can be hard to tell when the part is done without destructive testing of some sort. For tools this is critical. The amount of force I can put on a wrench is such that a bad forging will break which will likely lead me to injure myself. But with a good quality wrench I will know I'm safe and will be confident to apply force close to the maximum of what such a wrench will be able to provide (limited by my strength and the length of the wrench as a multiplier resulting in substantial torque on the bolt or nut). Typically the way the bolt would fail is that it becomes semi liquid and this is a slow process so you have some warning to reduce pressure. But a forging that breaks will just snap and all of that force is released at once. Great way to hurt yourself. So the quality of these forgings is very important and I'd much rather entrust my safety to the people that actually touch the metal than just to the engineers, who may be able to optimize for cost but who don't actually have much (sometimes no) shop experience. Knowing how to make something in theory and actually making it in practice can be quite far apart, even on something as mundane as what ultimately is a chunk of metal.