Many IMS "Solutions" showing up.

[Giller]

Originally Posted by JayG

at least you don't have to worry about an IMSB replacement

No, just termites.

[Giller]

Double post.

[Qmulus]

Originally Posted by flaps10

I'm often amused when people blame the engineers for poor decisions.

I work for a company that produces products of complexity that make anything Porsche has produced seem like a chinese tricycle. I can assure you that all such poor decision are made by upper management, and that an eager young engineer would be told to sit down and STFU until spoken to (or promoted to manager )

Everything I design has to "buy its way" on to the vehicle, and even then a positive business cases are often shelved.

Well, the tale I told was more of a flashback from my career 15 years ago or so. I am an electronics engineer that was involved in a situation where a major design change was decided on that I KNEW was a bad idea, but the young engineer proposing it came prepared with a stack of data from the manufacturer of a new IC backing up the proposal. He had gone around the rest of the engineering staff to the product manager after being shut down by the engineering manager. Being rather blindsided, the rest of the engineering team wanted more time to review, but the product manager said "OK, it is decided. Make it work!" So, after some grumbling and protest, it got done and seemed to work. A few weeks after the design was approved, incorporated into our product and production was about to begin, the manufacturer of the new component we had incorporated into our design issued a stop production order, as they found their parts could burst into flames under the right conditions. No, they did not have a fix or substitution. Quite a mess ensued, but in the end it didn't matter as the company soon lost funding and went belly up...

I think think the moral of the story is that design decision are often made by the wrong people for the wrong reasons. I am sure a lot of people in Porsche engineering felt that there were big problems with the M96 design from the start, but were likely told "Make it work!"

[mikefocke]

I managed a patent application as the lead (although I didn't design the product) and the application took every bit of 2 years from first submission to our lawyers to final approval. I think we spent probably $100k in lawyer fees even though all the technical product description writing and some of the legal arguments were authored by in-house staff. I'd guess probably $50k of our time and all these costs were in 7 years ago dollars.

As a former product manager of a relatively low volume product, I have an appreciation for the overheads that have to be built into pricing. Production is probably the least of the expenses, or was in our case. Things like marketing, documentation, support and warranty were easily more in a given year than component cost.

[mikefocke]

My experience was you needed patents in multiple countries. Different requirements, different lawyers, much $$$.

Hope you covered that Jake. Otherwise, expect knock-offs and trying to go after importers.

[Jake Raby]

Originally Posted by mikefocke

My experience was you needed patents in multiple countries. Different requirements, different lawyers, much $$$.

Hope you covered that Jake. Otherwise, expect knock-offs and trying to go after importers.

Covered it.

[BYprodriver]

Many IMSB "Substitutions" showing up!

We all know Porsche's directive about substitutions!

[mikefocke]

Not the "what 11 parts" question.

I see:
bearing
bolts
oil filter
mounting plate cover for IMB

What did I miss?