On Aug 8, 4:18 pm, Terry S <[email protected]> wrote: > Sometimes these efforts save the company millions. Other times they > don't save money at all or even end up costing the company money when > things go wrong. Overall, the 2nd set of eyes and hands generally > makes the product better and more reliable. Not always at first, but > inevitably the effort pays off and the company is better for it. When > I contribute to such an effort, I indirectly share in the savings, > thru increased margins, profit sharing, stock price, etc.
And sometimes they cost the company millions. Three words: "RA81 glue problem" There is often a tendency for good engineers who worked for a large company to go "into the weeds" when they form their own company to make similar products. In one example I'm very familiar with, engineers who worked for a company named I left and formed company E to make disk drives. They contracted with manufacturer T (a very well- respected name) to produce stepper motor driver hybrid modules. There was a near-90% incoming inspection failure rate on these modules, and the rest failed after they were installed on pre-production drives and shipped. The company I was a partner in, P, was E's second-largest customer, behind company D. I decided I needed to sort things out by flying to E's California location to see what was going on. Their engineers explained that the drives were failing due to the very-complex hybrid modules. I said something like "why don't you just use a quad Darlington IC instead?" After an extended period of "ummm... errrr...", they agreed that this might be a good idea, and their chief designer and I sat down to draw out the re-design that night. He had to fight to get approval to build a test batch of the redesigned boards, since others in the company were deeply invested in the original hybrid version. I still have one of the first 10 drives with the re-designed board (it probably still works, but there is no use for 40MB ST506-interface drives these days), as well as a bunch of the non-working hybrid-based logic boards. By the time E ramped up production of the drive, D had cancelled their purchase contract and E turned into a disk platter supplier and was subsequently purchased by another drive manufacturer. [Company names shortened to the initial letter to protect the innocent (and the guilty)] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB.
