When my boss gives me a pencil sketch with no
dimensions and not drawn to scale, I don't complain.
I just get on with it!
I consider it to be annother opportunity to show my ability and to please him.
I have to assume that the management has good reasons for the things they do. Your boss has carefully considered all his options and chose to task you with the job of making parts from less than ideal drawings. Most managers are open to suggestions but if you can't do the work then he may have to hire someone who can.
Last edited by js412000; 05-20-2010 at 02:25 AM.
Reason: spelling
I am not being sarcastic. I quite often start a project with a drawing that has no dimensions.
When that happens I question the initiating person as to what his desires are and "invent" dimensions and tolerances and select materials that will allow the part to function properly.
When my boss gives me a pencil sketch with no
dimensions and not drawn to scale, I don't complain.
I just get on with it!
I consider it to be annother opportunity to show my ability and to please him.
I have to assume that the management has good reasons for the things they do. Your boss has carefully considered all his options and chose to task you with the job of making parts from less than ideal drawings. Most managers are open to suggestions but if you can't do the work then he may have to hire someone who can.
I do support your statement and absolutely agree that it's imperative for anyone in manufacturing to look for areas of progress and increased efficiencies. Taking on new endeavors to increase productivity while decreasing costs is just some of the stuff to get ahead in this field.
You're incorrect to assume that all options have been carefully considered and I've proven this by the extremely profitable through-put attained when I'm supplied with the proper tools for the job. They have the ability to perform the task
I can't agree with you on the notion of what I'm interpreting from your post as "do it because the boss says so". This violates many principles of the sociology of business. Management shouldn't always be a one-way street. I do agree that managers and supervisors are in those positions usually because they hold such knowledge to be able to "give orders" (so to say) and (sometimes) the employees actually respect and follow said orders but a bold line exists between feeling as though you're being given new opportunities because you're showing promise as an asset and that of being exploited because your boss is, well, an ass-et.
I'm not asked to draft, nor dimension nor engineer. My job is to apply CNC tooling and paths by use of CAD-based CNC programming software. It is the engineering and design department's responsibility to develop accurate drawings from the conception of the idea. Any deviation from the exclusive purpose of each position in the organization can run the process afoul.
While it would probably be a risk for you to kick these drawing back to engineering. I would take them back and accuse someone of a bad joke, laugh a bit and ask where the good drawing is. I have seen better drawings come out of high schools drafting classes. I would also complain to your manager about how much extra time you had to spend to come up with something clear enough to program from. Along with everyone else I agree that the perpetrator, there's no reason to call him an engineer or draftsman, that drafted these should be on the street.
I can't agree with you on the notion of what I'm interpreting from your post as "do it because the boss says so". This violates many principles of the sociology of business.
I'm not asked to draft, nor dimension nor engineer. My job is to apply CNC tooling and paths by use of CAD-based CNC programming software. It is the engineering and design department's responsibility to develop accurate drawings from the conception of the idea.
Wow.
I check in to see if there are any good responses to the flip comment I made last night, to find this. All I can say, as a business owner who has also spent a lot of years working for other people, is my reaction to this is, Who in the f**k asked you?
We don't really know the whole story here, and therefore we can't know the dynamics of the organization, but considering that management doesn't seem to be wanting to make a change, there must be more than we are seeing.
This whole thing reminds me of a long conversation I had with a buddy when we were driving cross country a couple years ago. He is a project manager for an electrical contractor responsible for multi-million dollar new construction projects. He was telling me that when he works up the material take-offs, he attempts to determine as best he can how many, and what size, pipe runs will terminate in each enclosure (junction box) and have them pre-punched when the boxes are fabricated. He does this, not because someone told him it was his job, but because he realizes that he will save significant labor costs by not having his electricians screwing around punching a zillion holes in the field. I hav no idea how he indicates where he wants the holes punched; he may provide a sketch, he may provide a table of hole requirements for each surface of the box. Of one thing I'm sure; he doesn't draw the boxes in CAD. His job is to quote, specify, and manage million dollar construction projects, not draw the friggin' boxes. I'm sure he feels, and rightfully so, that that is one of the services he is paying the fab shop for.
This situation looks rather similar. I would suspect these are electrical or control enclosures of some sort. Likely every single one is unique. Likely, the "engineer" who is providing these layout drawings has a multitude of other responsibilities, and rightfully feel that he's not the friggin draftsman; that's what the guys who program for the CNC punches are paid for.
Perhaps he's right, considering that management seems happy with the arragngement.
These are used in equipment that makes cutting-edge, extremely high precision parts for the aerospace, medical and defense industries.
The overall value of this part is approx $10,000. Multiply that by about 15-30 of these parts and that's just how valuable this equipment is-and this is just a small portion of the complete system which consistently exceeds the 7 figure mark.
I used to work for a company that made screen printing machines and they took way more pride in and provided us with clean crisp drawings for even the simplest of their parts.
They'll make parts with dimensions down to 32nds and some 64th" yet leave the tolerance at 1/16th per dimension. Then they draw by incremental dims (random hole to random hole).
My first day here I saw the "1/16th" tolerance and was like "wow, i can practically make this by eye!" But soon learned that, like most things on the drawing, the tolerance should be ignored. This was after making the part well within tolerance yet it still didn't fit..
If all that wouldn't make someone snap, nothing would!
Jeff
I've already gone past the snapped state, boss called the medics when I started banging my head against the production manager's door and saying "make it stop"
Boris
Mmm quilted rubber wallpaper, a nice white jacket with extra long arms and crayons to draw with.... bet I still make a better drawing than the one originally posted
It was approved by 5 people. 1 is more than 3, 2 is less than 1...etc..
This may have been acceptable for the time but that same mentality is still being used today on the CAD software. There are about ten thousand different types of this particular part.
you just un-did my Lasik surgery! Opthamologists everywhere would pay you to put this on subway walls, etc.
Do you work for the gov't? that is the only way this kind of gross incompetance would not surprise me.
Seriously, you need to make this cost your employer more. You need to burn LOTS of time doing the draftpersons job. You still need to make good parts, but it needs to take soooo long that this problem draws more attention.
This situation looks rather similar. I would suspect these are electrical or control enclosures of some sort. Likely every single one is unique. Likely, the "engineer" who is providing these layout drawings has a multitude of other responsibilities, and rightfully feel that he's not the friggin draftsman; that's what the guys who program for the CNC punches are paid for.
Perhaps he's right, considering that management seems happy with the arragngement.
Dennis
Dennis
I might agree with you that we don't know the whole story.
I'll also agree that in some cases the fab shop is contracted to also FINISH the design while manufacturing the component.
On the note of the engineer not being the draftsman however I'll fight you tooth and nail.
Tough it may not be the engineer's job to finish detail the drawing, he better goddam be willing and able to do so whenever the working environment requires it. Not every workplace has a separate design and draftsman team, in which case you better roll up your sleeves and get to like doodling or find yourself a streetcorner to panhandle on.
I don't know what Adamshive's job title is, but if it doesn't include the creation of finished detailed blueprints, then the so called "engineer" better take up his beef with the owner of the company and not kick garbage down the line as he is obviously doing.
Moreover to any engineer who might be reading this. If you feel that you're a great engineer/designer/progressive thinker or whatever and it is beneath you to detail your design, all I have to say is that it is in fact in detailing your own design is by which your own ability can be proven to the outside world. You can model a fancy widget to fit another widget and make an impressive looking picture on the monitor, but only after you detail each and every feature of each and every component do you know that the whole thing is feasible, functional and manufacturable with the constraints you're given.
Being a jobshop, I can show you glaring examples of utter clusterfucks designed by cloudwalking engineers who won't even lower themselfs to get on the phone explaining why they've made a feature either impossible, expensive or non-functional.
This is not a joke. I have a customer where the engineering dept is so uncontrolled that I first get contracted to make a component to the blueprint supplied by the purchasing department.
I ship the part, get it through inspection and get it signed off on, after which it goes to the assembly floor.
Here is the kicker. As soon as that part is on the floor, the manufacturing dept. takes these parts and ships them back to me for modification to fit the mating assembly! I kid you not!
This isn't a feature that is to be done after assembly, neither is it a feature that depends on individual mating components. I don't get the assy, all I get is my own part with a hand drawn note from the shopfloor guy showing how he wants a hole elongated and a corner radius increased and 2 access holes drilled because it won't fit otherwise!
Same moron engineer calls for a .1242-.1245 hole 1.075 long through a block of aluminum just to insert a friggin' spring pin. He also requires an oilite bushing to be +/-.0002 on OD and ID, which is inserted into a Delrin AF component's sliding surface. Guess which one wears and how much?
Please don't tell me an engineer should not be bothered with detailing their design. Not until they do does it show how absolutely retarded some of them really are.
Of course, once they've prooven themselfs to be proficient and in fact good, then it is quite OK to leave the nitty gritty to the appropriate personnel, but even then they must work closely with them and follow their design all the way down the foodchain.
Show them in dollars and cents what you mean. Keep track of how long it takes you to create a program from the print they give you. Then keep track of how long it takes you create the same program from a proper CAD file. Multiply the difference by your shop rate and come up with a realistic figure of how much they are wasting on each program you have to produce. If they don't care, or don't think it is worthwhile, you will have to live with it. I don't think it's any better than the paper napkin. In a job shop, that's what you get sometimes. But to get it from your own company, even if it's a different department or division, is such a waste. Is there any push to cut costs or be more efficient from management? RJT www.progtool.net
Make 100 of those sons a bitches then haul them into the bosses office and say, I've been making these dam things for a week and they don't look at all like the print, somethings wrong.
Seriously, they're paying you by the hour, if they don't want to fix whats broken, laugh all the way to the bank.
Or, next review time, hell, don't wait until then, ask them for a raise this afternoon, your doing your work and the drafter's work, you should be making twice as much.
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Originally Posted by Modelman
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