Is this apocryphal word or a confirmed thing?

I'll hire her on the spot if it does happen.

 

Sending you PM

 

I am an engineer and I am good with the hands on stuff. I do think he makes a great point though and I would suggest to any aspiring engineers out there to get some real work experience as a mechanic. It will look good for you in any job you get, not just automotive engineering.

Also I was actually there when Mr. Lutz said all this and you can see some of the other updates from the SAE world congress on my post on the subject.

Later,
David

 

Since you were there, did YOU think Lutz was alluding to a future Camaro?

 

Honestly, not at all. Someone asked about the cancellation of Zeta and he replied with the "We're going to take another look at high performance rear-wheel drive" and then he said to paraphrase we do have a rear wheel drive architecture we could use "It's going to be something I sort of call Zeta-light".

While this could certainly apply to the Camaro and I thought about that when he said it. This was not really anything significant that hasn't already been said.

So no

 

My friends going though college now as engineers seem to get the best hands-on expirence working at small, non-union manufacturing plants. Since its a small place, they're usually given tasks that arnt your normal co-op paper pushing jobs, and since they're non-union they can get on the floor and do stuff with their own hands. Plus its good to learn before they get set in their ways after they graduate.

 

Wow, I so wanted to be an automotive designer through school. Listening to all of this I am glad I ended up in aerospace instead. Now I get to design with all the new fun materials CFRP, Ti, Al.

DE's can do a lot of good things for the company if only the guys up top would stop making them do a lot of non value added work and actually let them do their job. Theres enough of this problem in every company and industry it seems though.

 

A few pointers for the General:

1) While you can't ignore degrees, don't make them the end-all-be-all of a design engineer hiring decision. In a design engineering position, a degree IS NOT critical in many cases - hire exceptional people regardles of degree status, but make their attending nightschool a condition of their employment. While they are attending, treat them like they have the degree already. Many times in life this type of design engineer is BETTER EQUIPPED to handle the job since they will tend to have lots of hands-on experience due to their career path. Do you know how many times I've used my fluid dynamics class in my engineering career? That's right... NEVER. But I know plenty of old-school former GM manual designers with no degree who know more about designing and engineering parts than I ever will.

2) Make the first year of employment be spent in a plant doing the nuts and bolts of making parts and cars.

3) Get aggressive with the educators. Tell them point blank:

"You are failing. Fix it now. Less worthless theory and fluff classes (like literature and humanities) and more hands-on technical. If you don't we're going to categorically STOP HIRING YOUR GRADUATES because you can't give us good engineers."

Colleges need to get the silly idea that they are in the business of "rounding people experiences" and "giving them a broad perspective" out of their sheltered, self-absorbed and arrogant little pointy heads. We need engineers, NOT DIPLOMATS.

4) Here's an idea: Train your own expert design engineers. Design a multi-year curriculum and career path for them.

5) STOP USING CONTRACT PEOPLE. Hire the best and brightest DIRECT, train them, AND KEEP THEM. Quit spending all this effort to overcome people's learning curves only to lose them to the supply base and competitors like Ford right after they get enough experience to be marketable. It happens constantly and costs untold dump trucks full of money, but you can't put a good number on it so you've been ignoring it.

6) Give engineers a real career path. All the smart ones move into non-technical or technical management positions as quickly as possible because there is no way to advance as a design engineering technical expert.

7) Ignore Jack Welch. Welch made bushels of money at GE by getting out of manufacturing and turning GE into a service company. You don't have that option. Don't buy his books. If you have to know what's in them, go to a library. Besides, you have THOUSANDS of people smarter than Jack Welch working for you right now. EMPOWER THEM. TRAIN THEM. KEEP THEM.

8) There are world-class killer engineers available to you ON YOUR PAYROLL RIGHT NOW to train your young design engineers into thermonuclear-powered design engineering MACHINES. You retired all of them early and they live in Florida now collecting their pensions and playing gold. Hire a few of them back and bring them back as consultants to help train your design engineers. Hell, my old man (the bestest engineer ever, period - the Fisher Body trained GOD of seat engineering) would probably love to come back and help GM.

9) You will not win the victory over your competition with sharp marketing or beating your suppliers to death through purchasing. You WILL beat your competition with BETTER ENGINEERING and BETTER MANUFACTURING.

I've written this before. GM won't listen. I should stop wasting my breath.