The Next Big Thing – A New Product Snapshot
Most companies, large and small, recognize that they need to constantly develop new products or revisions to existing products to stay ahead of the herd. Ideas for new products come from multiple departments: Sales, Engineering, Marketing and occasionally the people who manufacture the product might speak up too. Sales and Engineering generally butt heads during new product development, especially in the concept phase. Sales goes and talks to customers and brings back highly optimist views of what will sell. This might be based on a compilation of many customers, or it might be based on one customer, or it might be based on something that someone dreams up and thinks it is a good idea. Because it’s Sales, this department always has a say and will get their New Product Idea heard. It is Engineering’s job to tell Sales how long it will take and how much it will cost to…
Bench Time
I’ve been thinking a lot about the variety of authors we have at Engineer Blogs. We have a mix of  academic and industry engineers and each arena provides its own challenges and goals. But one major thing we have in common is probably getting the test equipment you need. In the photo, USN avionics technician Norton is repairing a test bench (via Morning Calm News). Test equipment can kind of run our lives and our schedules if we aren’t careful. Academics are probably familiar with scheduling time at strange hours and working around the other researchers and students who might need to share the same equipment. Those of us in industry have similar issues with whose project takes priority for the EMI chamber or the oven. Does heat treating a production piece after a weld take priority over an emergency investigation of a material that might be failing at lower…