Design Engineer-Careers in Mechanical Engineering

Hello friends

This is my second article of the series. I m writing this on the basis of my experience as Design Engineer for 18 months.

The profile of Design Engineer is of true mechanical engineer. I think, this is the profile which a prospective mechanical engineer has in his dreams, while joining mechanical engineering.

The role of the Design Engineer is to manage the R&D project from conceptualisation to implementation. And its really interesting, as it touches all the aspects of the Mechanical Engineering.

It starts with Conceptualisation of the idea. For example the company decides to make a new type of steering, which is of lesser cost and requires lesser effort in manuevering the automobile. Now the first phase will be, idea generation. And after lot of brainstorming along with the project team members Design Engineer freezes few conceptual designs.

Then next phase is modelling. Now the design engineer works more closely to the concept and gives it better shape like rough dimensions. And the concept is converted to a CAD model both in 3-D and 2-D. This requires a good amount of knowledge of CAD modelling.

Then next phase is simulation. Here all the static and dynamic forces are applied on the model and tested in various situations. Like in the case of engine, lot of CAE and CFD simulations will be involved. This requires decent amount of knowledge of CAE and CFD softwares like Star CD.

Now, when the concept has been verified and approved from simulation phase, the next phase comes deals with actual prototyping. The point is, till date the technology is not sophisticated enough that can be 100% relied on. So, all the products are prototyped and tested physically. So, the dealing comes now with making a prototype. And this prototype can be made in number of ways. For example if we want to make a prototype of cylinder block of engine, then it can be made of sand casting, machining, and rapid prototyping techniques. So, here lot of knowledge of products functionality and finally deliverables are required. Also, here when the prototype is made then its verified with actual 2-D drawing. Many a times, due to constraints one has to take lot of deviations in order to make prototype. Here, while checking the prototype the engineer has to deal with QA deptt for CMM readings and other parameters.

Then next phase comes of is physical testing of the prototype. Every product has its testing parameters as defined by companies like Toyota, Suzuki........... and regulatory bodies like BIS, JIS and then the international standards. So, here the engineer needs a sound knowledge of these standards and the methodologies to conduct the test. In the case of designing altogether a new product, one has to take help of national and international Test Laboratories in order to set up the aparatus for testing and simulating the conditions for the same.

Once, the results of the physical testing are approved, the next phase comes is implementation. In this phase, design engineer has to take buy in from Machines Department, Production Department and other related departments. And once the buy in has been taken, all the departments together comes out with a implementation plan, which is normally again lead by the Design Engineer.

So this is the brief about Design Engineer Profile. I hope you will find the article interesting and useful.

Careers in Civil Engineering!!!

We all know that construction sector is booming like anything and there is lot of careers for civil engineers in this. As civil engineer I want to tell all those people who want to make their careers in construction industry.

Some of the Careers are mentioned below:

·Design Engineer: A person after passing from engineering college can join any construction industry in their design department as a design engineer. The work profile of a person is Design the structural design of any structures like Dams, Buildings, Roads, cooling towers etc depends upon the company a person joins.

·Site Engineer; In this a person send to actual construction project of a company as site engineer where a person have to manage lot of things like labors, materials etc and by seeing the drawing sent by design department make the structure.

·Quality control Engineer: In this person looking towards the quality aspects of site which includes material testing like concrete, sand, cement and aggregates etc and also looking the site activities whether everything is going on as per required quality of customers/clients. Also, person gets responsibility of making a bill, which he has to get pass from clients every month.

·Safety officer: In this person involved in looking after the safety aspects of site like safety of labors, electrical equipments related safety etc.

The Dilemma of a Computer or IT engineer.

When I say this, it comes with experience. Computer Engineering and IT engineering are the most sought after fields in engineering today. The highest cut offs are in these fields. The biggest rush is towards these fields. The core engineering fields - Mechanical, Electrical, Civil, Chemical etc have lost their charm. Most students go there as an after thought or because they cant get into telecom or computer or IT or electronics.

Lets come to the basic question. Why do you choose a field? Because of the opportunities? Because others influence you? Because of your personal inclination?

Most at the age of 18 dont decide for themselves. Its their parents decisions. But here's the problem. Very few follow their heart. Very few think what can I get out of this course. And today when engineers in India are a dime a dozen, its time to start thinking of your field and get the correct reasons to join one.

For example Computers and IT . The attraction level for these fields is at a big high. This is because of the attractive pay packages and the Indian IT companies that are making waves in the industry. But here is the dilemma. Does this degree help you in securing jobs into the IT companies? The answer is NO. the companies want engineers, be it mechanical or electronics or IT. This is because they are looking for aptitude and not computer/programming etc knowledge. All have a training course which helps you grasp various concepts and then you are put into the projects where you learn along the way. You are as good as your performance and nothign else. So whats the value of your degree when even a mechanical engineer can do your job? Wheres the job security? Where are your options? Can you do the job of a mechanical engineer? The answer is No. This is the cruel reality of these courses. Even though its attractive , its not value adding.

So what do you do? the best way is not to lock ur self by specialising. And frankly IT and computer engineering lock you to a domain. The bigger the base u have , the larger the number of domains you can capture. This does not mean that you do a basic engineering field, but this way you have more options for your future. But then again there is a question of personal liking. You wud be miserable doing what others say. So if your heart says Computers - do it, but do have a clear future in mind. Find various options available and differentate yourself from other engineers. Find your niche. and thats the way to plan a career.

Careers in Mechanical Engineering

Hello friends
This is my first article on the series. The series will be dedicated to the career options for engineers in the field of Mechanical Engineering.

Profile No. 1

Production Engineer

Well I am writing this on the basis of my experience as Production Engineer in Subros Ltd and Philips Electronics India Ltd

The role is of handling Production lines anywhere like in the field of Automobiles one handles assembly lines, machining lines, heat treatment lines, sheet metal lines, tube bending lines, etc.

The career path is normally a fresher is hired ( campus or off campus) as GET( Graduate Engineer Trainee). And the first few months goes to get accustomed to machinery. Especially in Japanese companies, it is ensured that engineers are trained to handle machines themselves. Then the Engineer comes into role of coordination. This includes, to delegate and monitor tasks of operators as per the scheducle given by PPC ( Production Planning & Control). Then to coordinate with Maintenance Deptt, Quality Deptt, Stores Deptt, Purchase Deptt, HR deptt and virtually every department.

This is most critical profile in production based companies, because here is the actual operations are conducted, others are support functions.

The issues one has to deal with are :

1. Material Shortages
2. Machine Failure
3. Bad Quality
4. Audits
5. Thefts
6. Absentism
7. Union Problems
8. Accidents
9. Production Targets Failure
10. Overtime

But, as the pressure is high so are the rewards. Production Engineers gets maximum increments and faster growth. Normally these are the people, who become Plant Heads, Operations Head and finally CEO's

The package starts in SME's is around 1.8 lac/annum and grows to 5 in next 3 years. After that it depends on the person's performance and the career path he has created for himself. Apart from money, this is the field for leaders, who have dominant and assertive personalities. They work like generals of army in the field.

My suggestion to everyone who wants to build career in Mechanical Engineering is spend at least 6 months in Production Department. The learning will be actual operations, around which the whole company revolves. So, once a person has been through this experience, he can work in any department keeping the actual situations in mind.

It will be good, if you read this article then comment on it. It will motivate me to write more in the series.

Voltage Controlled Oscillators

What are voltage controlled oscillators?
The voltage controlled oscillator which is more commonly known, a vco, is an oscillator which works on the principal of variable capacitance or tuning with a varactor diode. The voltage controlled oscillator is tuned across its band by a "clean" dc voltage applied to the varactor diode to vary the net capacitance applied to the tuned circuit.

What are Varactor or Tuning Diodes
These types of diodes work on the principle that all diodes exhibit some capacitance. When the voltage applied across the diodes changes the capacitance developed across it also changes.

Temperature compensated voltage controlled oscillator
A VCO with temperature compensation is achieved using reverse biased diodes. The VCO includes an amplifier that provides the required signal gain, a resonator tank circuit that provides the required phase shift, and at least one frequency tuning circuit for tuning the frequency of the oscillator signal. Each frequency tuning circuit includes at least one tuning capacitor and at least one MOS pass transistor that connects or disconnects the tuning capacitor(s) to/from the resonator tank circuit. Each reverse biased diode may be a parasitic diode that is formed at a drain or source junction of a MOS transistor. The reverse biased diodes have capacitance that can be controlled by a reverse bias voltage to compensate for drift in the VCO oscillation frequency over temperature.

Kanban

Hello Friends

This is my second article of the series of Toyota Production System on this blog. I m not making it very elaborate and cumbersome. For more details there is lot of literature available on the net. My only objective in writing this article is to give the jist of the methodology and to share my experiences with the readers.


What is Kanban?

Kanban is a critical element of Toyota Production System, by acting as enabler to JIT. It was developed in Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan during 1950’s. Now it is a very popular tool in lean manufacturing.

Essentially, the most important role Kanban plays by enforcing and checking Pull System in manufacturing. Literal meaning of Kanban comes from Kan- card, Ban- signal. So, it’s a information system employing cards that enables and checks the usage of Pull System.

Pull & Push System

Without taking too much length of the article I will briefly explain Pull and Push System. Lets suppose there are four stations in an assembly line as shown in the fig’s. Station 1 is the first station and feeds material to the second station and so on.

In the pull system, the production schedule is given to the station 1. The station 1 accordingly makes the first component and pushes it to the station 2 and so on. In this way, along with the material flow station 1 is giving the information target also to the station 2, that how many components it needs to make.

In the push system, the production schedule is given to the station 4. the station 4 demands the number of components required from station 3 and so on. In this way the information is passed on from station 4 to station 3, that how many components it needs to make.

The push system is good when the certainty is the system is high, but normally its not so. Normally there is lot of uncertainties like change in demand, machine breakdowns, defective components, etc. This uncertainty leads to building up of inventory at every station. While in the case of pull system, actually the customer is driving the demand, by feeding the information of limited time period to the station 4. This enables the system to be flexible and more responsive to the market demands. The pull system, enforces that if one station is out of order then the whole line will stop example : if station 3 breaks down, then it won’t be able to supply to station 4 and it will stop and it won’t demand anything from station 2 and it will stop. This leads to reduced inventory at every step, which liberates the cost stuck in the inventories.


So, there should be a system that enables the pull system. Here Kanban comes into picture.



How Kanban works?

The simplest method used for Kanban is Dual Kanban. The elements of this system are :

• Production-ordering Kanban Card
• Withdrawal Kanban Card
• Kanban Post

A Production-ordering Kanban - specifies the kind and quantity of product which the preceding process must produce. The one illustrated (right) shows that the machining process SB-8 must produce the crankshaft for the car type SX50BC-150. The crankshaft produced should be placed at store F26-18. The production-ordering Kanban is often called an in-process Kanban or simply a production Kanban.

A Withdrawal Kanban - specifies the kind and quantity of product which a manufacturing process should withdraw from a preceding process. The withdrawal Kanban illustrated (right) shows that the preceding process which makes this part is forging, and the person carrying this Kanban from the subsequent process must go to position B-2 of the forging department to withdraw drive pinions. Each box of drive pinions contains 20 units and the shape of the box is `B'. This Kanban is the 4th of 8 issued. The item back number is an abbreviation of the item.

Kanban Post - Each process (area, cell) on the production line has two Kanban `post-boxes', one for withdrawal and one for production-ordering Kanbans.


Using Kanbans on a production line

At regular intervals a worker takes withdrawal Kanbans that have accumulated in his process post-box, and any empty pallets, to the location where finished parts (components, assemblies) from the preceding process are stored. Each full pallet has attached to it one or more production-ordering Kanbans which he removes and puts in the appropriate post-box belonging to the process that produced the parts. The worker now attaches a withdrawal Kanban to the pallet and takes it back to his own process area. When this new pallet begins to be used, its withdrawal Kanban is put back into the withdrawal post-box. At each process on the line, production-ordering Kanbans are periodically removed from their post-box and used to define what parts and quantities to produce next.



Enablers for Kanban are Quality Assurance and Production Smoothing as can be seen in this fig. If these things are not followed instead of becoming a boon to company Kanban becomes headache. I myself faced this problem when I designed Kanban System in one of the companies I worked for. But the moment I enforced Quality Assurance and Production Smoothing, the Kanban was able to play its meant role. I designed the system so that we are able to avoid the pilferation of material on the assembly lines. The pilferation, lead to inaccurate data punching in ERP software of SAP. The problem was that we were following push system. The worers were getting material more than required for the particular shift. This lead them to neglect the material falling on the shopfloor. The material which fell down was never picked by them, but by sweeper landing it to dustbins. So, actually the ERP was showing that the material of 100 assemblies was there, but it was of only 90. Now this inaccuracy of data, lead to backfire of whole Supply Chain. The stores were not aware that they are not storing enough material to support the production, so they didn’t order to vendors. Vendors didn’t knew that they have to produce this much supply components, so the vendor didn’t plan. But our customer has to be satiated at any cost. So, the result was use of defective parts, stealing parts from other lines, pressurizing vendors to produce more than its capacity. This chain of activities lead to the firefighting in all the related departments like PPC( Production Planning and Control), Production, Purchase, Stores, Vendors and so on. But the core reason was pilferage or push system. So, I proposed this to my company. And fortunately, I was given project to implement it. I studied around eight companies for designing it including Maruti Udyog Limited, Toyota, GE and others. Finally, when we implemented it, the results were simply mind blowing. I never thought that it could be so powerful. My only aim was short sited that is to check material pilferage. But the results were that the inventory of 48 hours on shop floor got reduced to 4 hours, production doubled, manpower was cut by 25 %, production incharge who earlier was always fighting for material on shopfloor didn’t need to go to shop floor for a week. This was one of the major turning point in my life. And I came to understand and appreciate the power of Toyota Production System or Lean Manufacturing and till now directly or indirectly I m pursuing career in it.
I hope the article would be helpful to the readers. Wait for next article of the series by me.