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By Design News Staff -- Design News, June 3, 2002
You go, girls!
I read your editorial "Girls, robots, and Britney" (DN 04.22.02) and it was great. I have been a design engineer for over 26 years now and I lived in Austin for the first 13 of those 26 years working for Texas Instruments and Motorola. Your editorial clearly describes a vast untapped resource of girl power in the field of engineering and mathematics. I, for one, have seen so few lady engineers in my time and I think it is high time that this is corrected.
Modern society seems to suppress the natural inquisitiveness of young girls and unfortunately aims them in other directions. The very few lady engineers that I have met during the past quarter century were brilliant and I can't help but feel that this has helped them gain acceptance in a very male dominated career field.
I wholeheartedly applaud Rachel Muir's "Girlstart". Their mantra should be: "You go, girl !!!"
Fred Gasparri, Design News reader
Function and cost count
I read with interest the opinion letter, "Tooth or Consequences", and the rebuttal (DN 04.22.02) but I think both views miss the central issues. The cost of products is driven by many market forces, foremost of which is the need of the producer to make a profit to pay the engineer's salary and provide a suitable R&D budget for new product development (innovation and invention).
The reader's view of "function first" and, apparently, cost-be-damned is so short sighted as to be laughable since he does not apparently realize how his livelihood is provided. An engineer must consider function and cost in all designs. His central view is that that failing to "meet functional requirements" is far worse than designing something so it is lower in cost. Yet, any product requirements document that I have ever worked from or developed has always included performance and cost requirements. Failure to meet either of these reduces the chances of a product's success. This is particularly true in medical devices since the marketplace is typically not very large compared to the general consumer marketplace.
Field's rebuttal merely restates a fact noted by Smith that wider acceptance brings down cost, typically through economies of volume, which is partially what happened with computers. What neither seems to recognize is that these cost reductions also happen because engineers figure out ways to reduce the cost of components and designs irrespective of the volume factor. They do this by considering cost and performance at all times. Their companies are able to provide a lower cost product, while maintaining or increasing profit margins, and capture more market share. The success of the company then allows the engineer to keep his/her job and enjoy the "play time" provided by R&D budgets. The circle is complete because cost and performance are considered together, except maybe in defense and aerospace, but that is changing rapidly.
Should the engineers be congratulated on a good design? Certainly! Should the engineers be challenged to reduce cost? Absolutely! Should the dentist consider the value to his/her patients of a better, more expensive drill? Definitely, but isn't it just common sense to make cost/benefit decisions regarding new technology? After all, we do that every time we go to buy something. We have choices on products thanks to good engineering. Good engineering finds ways to make the design less expensive while meeting or exceeding customer performance requirements. Plain and simple. Smith has done the engineering community a disservice by suggesting otherwise, and Field missed the opportunity to set him straight.
Thomas L. Grey, EVP, Product Development
The free market argument
Ms. Field and Mr. Smith are both wrong and right at the same time. The first person to market who has pioneered the technology must be able to make enough profit to recoup the development and to fund research into expanding the technology. Field's computer analogy was an excellent example. If IBM would not have been able to sell a sufficient number of these to create a market and need for faster, better, and cheaper machines, at a relatively high initial price, there would have been no money for development research.
Competition will create the need for the cost reductions but there must be someone willing to bring a product to market at considerable financial risk and be prepared to face the onslaught of competitors replicating the technology at a lower cost. In a free market where the technology is highly salable, unrestricted competition will drive the cost to minimum levels for the market demand.
Bill Isom, Product Engineer, McAllen, TX
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