I always assumed the engine was designed for multiple applications and then different people specified that engine to go into this particular vehicle. Manufacturers use the same block in lots of applications and some parts end up in crazy places. And they are too damn cheap to modify it so it can be serviced. Ford and Mazda and maybe Volvo used the same 1.8 liter 4 cylinder block in Escorts and Miatas and whatever else.
I teach physics, often to engineering students. Nearly all of them are totally uninterested in understanding anything, they just want a recipe to plug the numbers into.
You forgot to mention something important . . .
During that initiation period, make the guys buy their own tools, also
Teach them if they don’t have the stuff to get the job done, you can’t earn a living
That includes tools, training, resources, common sense, etc.
It would be a real eye opener for some pencil pushers or computer jockeys who have no real idea what a struggle it can sometimes be to fix cars correctly, efficiently, and also pay the bills
Some of these guys probably have some completely wrong ideas about the industry, most of which would be quickly disproven, if they had to turn wrenches flat rate for awhile
@rocketman, don’t take this as a knock on your son. I was a young engineer once, and without young, inexperienced people that don’t know that certain things are impossible, those improbably things would remain impossible.
I don’t know what your son majors in,but I have worked with a lot of young engineers over the decades. I might have been one too, but I don’t remember back that far. Anyway, things ar designed for their most lucrative application. In the space business, we routinely have to deal with that. Almost no one designs things for our applications, and if the do, they are obscenely expensive. Paint for $1000/pint? All day long. But if we can get by with something that costs a lot less, we will, even if it has drawbacks. Most of the vendors don’t really know all the chemicals in their materials. They mean well, and work with us as much as they can, but they sell paint in 55 gallon drums on pallets to someone else, and we buy it by the quart. They know who butters their bread.
When I was a young engineer, I behaved the same way as your son (it’s coming back to me now…). I eventually learned to accept the world as it is and just work around it. Since I figured that out, work is more rewarding. If I can find a way to use a mundane material in an exotic application, it is quite satisfying. I’ve also learned that there are many ways to do things successfully. I let vendors do their thing and just try to understand how they try to accomplish the goals.
No offense taken jt, I’m thrilled that he’s getting to see how things work outside the classroom, the lab at his university and our shadetree garage. He’s an EE student and really he’s interested in electrical applications in the automotive industry. I’ll have him read your (collectively all of you) posts. In my field of expertise I appreciate both the experience of my mentors and the passions and naivete of my students. Thanks for the comments folks! Rocketman
I teach physics, often to engineering students. Nearly all of them are totally uninterested in understanding anything, they just want a recipe to plug the numbers into.
Where do you teach that the students have so much apathy. I know it wasn’t that way when I did my undergraduate work at Syracuse…and it wasn’t that way when my daughter did her undergraduate work at MIT. Physics was the basis for all higher engineering and most sciences. Even my daughter who majored in Chemistry…loved physics.
For engineers or Math majors…we usually LOVED those classes. With humanity classes - I just wanted to do the work and get out. They were a waste of my time and energy.
In all the places I have worked, the design engineers are intimately familiar with the product. They have to build the various breadboards, prototypes, beta and pilot units. In many cases they even have to build the first batch of production units alongside of manufacturing engineering and production (actually a fully cross-functional group of participants). It’s part of the formal product development process. They own the design well into production and are heavily involved in any field issues as well.
I think one of the primary misunderstandings people outside of the process do not comprehend is that the design engineer does not have the final say in most matters. People somewhat divorced from the development process are driving the bus so to speak. Oftentimes, the new recruits out of school find out that the real world is in stark contrast to the environment in teaching institutions…The students engaged in co-op programs are usually the ones to hit the ground running and have the least amount of shock and disillusionment to overcome…
Twin Turbo, you have worked i some unique places then, my experience has been quite the opposite, especially since the introduction of autocad. Now the engineers design it on autocad or a similar 3D program ad they never venture out to the factory floor unless someone (like me) drags them out there and forces them to see when parts don’t fit.
But one thing, no matter the product, the design is always for the ease (lowest cost) of production, not for future maintenance. Parts are attached to the engine and transmission before they are inserted into the body of the vehicle and that is why so often, it seems easier to pull the engine to get at a simple part that should have been easily accessible. Even then, you still have to pull other parts first simply because of order of assembly.
The design process is for the lowest possible manufacturing costs so that the product is more affordable while maximizing profits for the manufacturer.
Well, I have visited far more places than I have worked and they all operate similarly. Perhaps the automotive industry is unique… 
Yes, everything is designed using computer programs. Many details that had to be discovered after the parts were fabricated in the old days can now be clearly seen in the CAD models. This is true for all disciplines; mechanical, electrical, PCB, optical…etc. They all port between systems so we can integrate everything into a single model for final review. Just got done reviewing the modeling of airflow in a complex system of sub-assemblies.
All of the process flows I have ever been involved in require certain gates be passed; Preliminary Design Reviews (PDR), Critical Design Reviews (CDR) and First Article Inspection plans (FAI) including some type of verification it meets the intended design goals before we can even consider moving into commercialization of the parts. The idea of modeling something in 3D CAD, ordering the parts and sending them directly to the line for production use is unimaginable actually…
the design is always for the ease (lowest cost) of production
This is true for cars and many other utilitarian products. There are many products where this is not true. One example- anything for the semiconductor manufacturing industry. There, ease of maintenance/repair is the trump card. When they are losing millions by the hour for downtime, every minute counts. Cost is still a factor but it’s down the list a bit…
TT, I have to respectfully disagree with you on the semi-conductor industry. Not sure exactly which perspective you are looking at, in some ways you could be right. Most electronics is modular, PCB’s, LSIC’s and rack mounted LRU’s (line replaceable units) so something like a server farm or controller for a complex piece of manufacturing equipment can be repaired quickly. But the PCB’s are far harder to repair today and often are just discarded when they become defective.
The PCB’s are cheaper to manufacture now than they are to repair. Repairs often involve microscopes and very expensive soldering equipment. It’s not your grandfathers soldering gun anymore. A 2M electronic assembly repair station can run anywhere from $6k to $60k or more now.
The reliability of the semi-conductor devices today also discourage repair.
I’m talking about the equipment used to make semiconductor devices. We design and manufacture custom high voltage power supplies that actually do (generate & steer) the ion beam implantation/deposition onto the substrate to create the end device (microprocessor etc). These things are embedded like ticks in the larger system so gaining access to them is actually quite labor intensive. A lot of design time goes into minimizing that labor time.
FWIW- we still repair to the component level and return to field. Surface mount in 0402 packages, SOT, SOD, BGA, Flat pak. I have personally built many PCBAs with discretes in 0402 SM. I haven’t built a PCBA in decades without stereoscope magnification and the smallest iron tips you can imagine. I hate paste and air soldering on prototypes…Most prototypes go straight to contract manufacturing for IR reflow…it’s far cheaper to respin than to have high $ engineering labor building complex PCBAs. But production repairs are done by hand in a special area on the floor.
What business are you engaged in where they can throw a design over the wall into production without proper V&V first?
My last company made distribution transformers for rural utilities. Most were custom designs with production runs as little as one. You meet all the requirements of ISO and good manufacturing design by making proofs, that is making transformers at the extreme ends of your range, i.e. largest kVA, highest current, highest voltage, etc that prove you can design good products, but you can’t do a full development on a production run of one.
You do however run all the required tests on short production runs. If you get a large run, you can just test in accordance with ANSI requirements on a sample, but we did the full battery of tests on all our transformers anyway. We did have a few large utility customers (cities) but mostly as a backup supplier. The big guys usually preferred our transformers but we could not compete with the bigger players like GE or ABB on price, but we could whip their keesters on customer service.
I also worked in the implant (knees, hips) industry, PBX training, cylinder head foundry ad the US Navy as a electronics technician (20 years) ad at one time I was in charge of all Navy Aviation 2M (EAR) training.
I’m glad you guys are around and know what you are doing, but the only initials I recognized were PBX, ISO, and ANSI. LOL. Like Goldwater used to say, love him or hate him: “I’m no Phi Beta Kappa, I hire them”.
2M EAR Micro/Miniature Electronic Assembly Repair. kVA kilo Volts Amps, a measure of a transformers capacity (max watts).
We do limited production of very customized products here as well. One example is a 750kV 25ma e-beam supply used in homeland security type applications- that’s all I can say.
We still have to go through all the steps of verifying and validating the product to the agreed upon specifications. Therefore, these products tend to be very costly to produce and are subject to all the issues you’d expect from a product where only a few are ever built.
One thought I had on your original comment regarding the fact that most of the semiconductor industry gear is already easy to repair-
Most electronics is modular, PCB’s, LSIC’s and rack mounted LRU’s (line replaceable units) so something like a server farm or controller for a complex piece of manufacturing equipment can be repaired quickly.
Keep in mind, you’re looking at the end result. There’s a reason why it is in that configuration/form factor. That is not the least expensive way to build those systems. It’s done for ease of repair and maintenance which is the point I was making about certain products/applications. If I wanted to design and build a system as cheaply as possible, the last thing I would choose is an expensive rack based enclosure system with backplanes for interconnecting PCBAs. They’d have standoffs between them with cables soldered into the boards in the cheapest box I could find/fabricate 
In these kind of applications, the CTQ priority is usually-
- meet or exceed the performance criteria
- MTTF/MTBF maximization
- Ease of maintenance/repair
- Cost
My vision of the auto industry is more like:
- Meet the minimum performance criteria
- Cost to manufacture
- MTTF/MTBF exceeds warranty period
- Maintenance/repair concerns