By Design: A designer in your future

In this bimonthly column, Glenn Beall of Glenn Beall Plastics, Ltd., Libertyville, IL, shares his special perspective on issues important to design engineers and the molding industry.

Americans seem to thrive on bad news. In the final analysis, the media only gives us what we want. Fire, floods, volcanoes, and earthquakes are all fascinating, so long as they are somewhere else. It may be that it makes Americans feel good to learn that it was somebody else's economy that failed or government that was overthrown.

If Americans are buoyed up by somebody else's troubles, now is a time for businessmen to be elated. The Japanese are struggling with the inflexible but outmoded management style that made them great in the past. Japan is no longer the threat it was in the late 1980s when it bushwhacked various U.S.industries. Overregulated Europe is bogged down with its welfare system.

Europe's economic powerhouse is just now realizing the full cost of absorbing East Germany. In spite of scholarly sounding pronouncements, no one actually knows the final outcome or the true cost in money and lost jobs of a united Europe. Will a united Europe become an exporting powerhouse to be feared, or just one large market with a single set of importing regulations, to be exploited by the rest of the world?

The U.S. as World Leader

After being humiliated by Germany and Japan in the late 1980s, the U.S. re-engineered itself and regained its position as the world's largest exporter in 1991.

In spite of the editorial abuse they receive, American workers are second to none in productivity. The 1992 McKinsey Global Institute reported that the average American worker produced $49,600 worth of goods and services per year. A German worker averaged $44,200; Japanese, $38,200; and English, $37,100. The American farmer was actually the most productive person in the whole world.

The United States has enjoyed economic growth for the last seven years. The World Competitiveness Yearbook, published by the International Institute of Management Development, ranks the U.S. first in competitiveness. Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan are next in line, followed by Switzerland in ninth place, Germany 10th, and England and France, 19th and 20th respectively.

A country's prosperity can also be judged by the growth of its economy and the creation of jobs. The U.S. economy has been increasing at approximately 2.5 percent per year, and jumped to an annualized 5.6 percent the first quarter of 1997. Twenty-six million new jobs were created between 1979 and 1995. Unemployment is only 5.3 percent. Central Eur ope's economic growth has been sluggish. The total number of jobs has been constant since 1982. Unemployment now averages 12 percent.

The plastics industry has contributed significantly to growth in the United States, with a 17 percent increase in employment between 1991 and 1994. The Society of the Plastics Industry estimates that 1.23 million people were employed in the plastics industry in 1994.

There are all kinds of indicators that the United States has learned how to cope with a global economy. So where is the doom and gloom, and what does this have to do with "A Designer in Your Future?" Injection molders, like all other manufacturers, can only produce what engineers design. The product designs being produced have been good enough to allow U.S. manufacturers to become leaders in the global marketplace. As this "By Design" column has continually pointed out, many of those plastic part designs are not as good as they could have been. There is much more to a successful new product than design. Product design is, however, where the whole new product process starts. Without a desig n, there is no need for a plastic material, a tool, or a molding machine, and there is no product to be sold for a profit. This country's ability to produce world class designs in the future is an area of concern.

Future Shortage of Designers

The American Assn. of Engineering Societies (AAES) estimates that 362,000 engineers will leave the work place by the year 2005. These are the experienced engineers who know how to keep the wheels of industry turning.

As a group, they represent the engineers who were too good to be downsized during the last few years of frenzied corporate re-engine ering. These were the engineers who designed the products that allowed the U.S. to become a world-class manufacturing country. Good new products are designed by knowledgeable engineers. The question is: Who is training the replacement engineers who will design the plastic products of the future?

The AAES study indicates that growth in the economy will create a need for an additional 503,000 engineering jobs. The study also points out that, for the first time ever, computer engineering will overtake mechanical engineering as the largest engineering discipline. Product designers come from many disciplines, but the majority of them are trained as mechanical engineers.

If an optimistic 10 percent of the new engineering jobs that are created during the next 10 years turn out to be product design jobs, that would represent only 5030 new design engineers per year. That seems like a lot, but it is less than one design engineer per injection molding company in the United States. Is that enough product design engineers to create all of the new products that will be required to allow this country to continue as the world's largest exporter?

A Designer in Every Shop

The trend over the past few years has been for original equipment manufacturers to outsource more and more of their product and part design. There are no indications that this trend is lessening. It can be anticipated that, in the foreseeable future, more and more injection molders will be wanting to hire a design engineer. Where will those designers come from?

Engineering curricula concentrate on theory and not on "how to" courses. Today, it is possible to get a degree in mechanical engineering without taking a course in drafting. The lucky graduate will have had a course or two in CAD. That course will have taught him or her how to run the program, but it is very unlikely that it included anything about plastic part design.

The teaching institutions that offer degrees in plastics technology do a better job than the engineering schools in preparing their graduates for careers as product designers. These curricula may include design courses, but they rarely include anything about the details of plastic part or mold design. The current system is not providing the "ready to start producing" design engineers that the molding industry needs. This leaves molders with some rather unpleasant alternatives.

The molding industry could organize itself under the auspices of SPE or SPI to undertake the laborious process of changing engineering curricula to include practical courses on plastics technology and design. This would take so long and have such a small chance of success that the prospect discourages the effort.

One alternative is to hire an experienced designer away from someone else. This is the American way, but it doesn't work well when the economy is in a growth mode. If you can't steal a good designer from a competitor or customer, you have no recourse but to train your own. Whether you promote a bright young person off the factory floor, or start w ith a graduate mechanical or plastics engineer, you will have some training to do, and that takes time. The sooner you get started, the sooner you will reap the benefits.

A couple of tricks of the trade are to 1) train two or three designers at the same time and 2) don't forget that once they are trained and are producing, they are worth more and they must be paid accordingly.

If you train three designers simultaneously, you can place the best of the designers in your production department. The one that talks the best can go into customer sales and service. The poorest of the three is a spare designer for someone to hire away from you.