Engineering Management in a Global Environment

Guidelines and Procedures

M. Kemal Atesmen

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351966139
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

In today's global business environment with high speed interactions, engineering organizations are evolving continuously. Engineering Management in a Global Environment: Guidelines and Procedures provides guidelines for changing roles of engineering managers in the international arena. The book covers global, multidisciplinary, and flat engineering organizations. Recommended procedures for hiring, mentoring, work assignments, and meetings in the global arena are detailed. Guidelines for keeping up with technology and with the changing world, performance reviews, layoffs, necessary engineering tools, and work atmosphere are discussed. Procedures for engineering team building and for having good relationships with upper management, customers, subcontractors, and regulatory agencies are provided. Each chapter ends with a checklist summarizing engineering managerial guidelines in that chapter.

1	Typical Engineering Organizations

CHANGING ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENT

In today’s global business environment and its high-speed interactions, engineering organizations have evolved from being simple 10- to 15-people traditional technology departments to complex, interactive, and cross-functional matrix organizations. Many international projects in research, development, manufacturing engineering, and customer support require various disciplines of technology. These international project teams are made up of different types and levels of engineers and technicians from several different countries. You might have an engineer working with a project team on an automated assembly project installation in Malaysia for a year, and that person might report on a dotted line to a project manager in Malaysia. To enhance your customer base and support in Japan, it might be necessary to bring a couple of Japanese engineers to your U.S. base to train for 6 months to learn the complicated test procedures for future products. These Japanese engineers would report to you on a dotted line for 6 months. Or, if your team is designing a new communication chip in the United States whose several components are being designed in Munich, Germany, then you and your team members must be in continuous communication with your counterparts in Germany.

You might be designing and building offshore oil rig equipment in the United States. After that, you have to install and train Russian engineers and technicians on Sakhalin Island in Russia. Timely and high-caliber customer support is required for your company’s final payments. You might be managing a group of engineers who work from home, and you might never meet face-to-face with these subordinates during their tenure in your department. Your only interface with them is through e-mails, teleconferences, and videoconferences. Further complicating this maze of engineering management issues is that many engineers and technicians are shifting away from the one-career mentality; therefore, the turnover rate of engineers and technicians is increasing as we become more and more of a global economy.

Engineering managers must deal with globally expanding and continuously changing technologies, markets, and customers. They have to know every available technical resource in their company worldwide, in their consultants’ base, in their subcontractors’ base, and in the customers’ base. In addition, engineering managers must be very savvy with regard to their company’s worldwide supportive organizations, such as the marketing talent, financial talent, legal talent, document control talent, information technology talent, and shipping and receiving talent, among others.

TYPES OF ENGINEERING ORGANIZATIONS

An engineering organization chart for a medium-size production company in the United States is shown in Figure 1.1. This engineering organization is for a domestic company that designs and produces high-technology products in the United States. The organization is composed of one engineering director and five engineering departments, each with its own engineering manager. These five engineering departments have a total of 29 subordinates. The departmental divisions are for administrative purposes, but the five engineering departments share continuous cross-functional responsibilities. For example, design engineers help manufacturing engineers and quality engineers during production ramp-up of a new product. Design engineers routinely work with other engineers to modify and update a new product in order to achieve a high-yielding and reliable product. Design engineers learn during this ramp-up process all of the ins and outs of manufacturing and test processes. If one of the manufacturing or test engineers goes on vacation or quits, any one of the design engineers can step in and fill the vacuum. By wearing different hats, they become more interested in and excited about their jobs. These types of cross-functional responsibilities create a vast engineering knowledge network for a company and motivate subordinates to continue to learn and improve their skills with interesting and challenging assignments. It is the responsibility of engineering department managers to orchestrate the grooming of novice engineers to excel in multidisciplinary teams. Engineering department managers have to set up training programs and performance targets for every subordinate in order to develop an outstanding multidisciplinary knowledge base and environment aligned with professional growth targets.

Subordinates groomed in such a multidisciplinary environment will be more stimulated and more challenged. This type of engineering environment also enhances their personal growth. The down side is that subordinates will become more marketable and might jump ship if they find better opportunities. It is not possible to keep your subordinates boxed in. In today’s world, managers must challenge them continuously and groom them within the multidisciplinary environment of the company. Such an environment is not confined only to engineering departments; rather, it extends to sales and marketing, legal, finance, receiving and shipping, and other domestic and international departments in the company. A multidisciplinary environment will also expand outside of the company to, for example, customers, subcontractors, regulatory agencies, and suppliers.

The classical engineering organization depicted in Figure 1.1 is changing quickly to a much flatter management organization. Engineering managers are utilizing a global pool of engineering freelancers instead of traditional full-time engineers. The advantages of using engineering freelancers include lower costs, being able to make temporary assignments for a given project, and gaining the necessary expertise very quickly. A global pool of engineering freelancers allows engineering departments to hire the best candidates for the job all over the world regardless of their proximity to the main office.

The workplaces themselves are undergoing dramatic changes to stimulate their engineers. Fully equipped exercise gyms and locker rooms, group tai chi classes, inhouse masseuses, resting cots, and free lunches are becoming the norm. Dress codes, too, are evolving; for example, male engineers are abandoning suits, ties, and dress shoes in favor of casual blue jeans, t-shirts, and flip-flops. An example of a multidisciplinary, international, flat engineering organization for a medium-size production company in the United States is shown in Figure 1.2.

FIGURE 1.1 Engineering organization chart for a medium-size production company located in the United States.

Now let us analyze a different type of engineering organization where the products are becoming smaller, specifications are changing, and critical parameters are getting tighter and tighter. Such an engineering organization for a medium-size wafer production company in the United States is shown in Figure 1.3. Wafer production companies operate in a three-shift, 24/7 environment. Everything is equipment and process based. It is necessary to be a specialist in certain equipment and processes in such a production environment. You cannot ask a photolithography engineer to help a vacuum engineer when a sputtering machine is out of control. The engineering department shown in Figure 1.3 is much larger because it has to operate over three shifts every day of the week. This wafer fabrication engineering organization includes a vice president of engineering, five engineering directors, two engineering managers, and 48 subordinates.

Every subordinate must be groomed and allowed to grow within their own specialized, focused environment. As an example, a photolithography engineer in a wafer factory will specify lithography equipment, interface with the equipment vendor, and perform acceptance tests, in addition to specifying the environment (e.g., temperature and humidity control, cleanliness control, vibration control, voltage fluctuations control) for the equipment. When the equipment is accepted after several iterations, it is installed in the factory under the supervision of the photolithography engineer, who will perform process capability tests on the new equipment for critical parameters. After the process capability tests, the engineer will perform design of experiments to optimize the settings for every product that will be run through the new machine. If a photolithography process goes out of control, the photolithography engineer will be called to assist, day or night. These professionals are dedicated to their specific tasks and environment. They improve in their specialty as they gain more and more experience. They are challenged and excited by tightening critical parameters. They look to the future for improvements in lithography equipment, brought about in part by the input they provide to lithography equipment manufacturers regarding what will be required in the next six months or year. These kinds of dedicated engineers focus on their process and equipment. They strive to become leaders in their specialty.

Because these special engineers and technicians are not operating in a multidisciplinary environment, it is difficult to stimulate them and keep them at their jobs for long periods. They are hard to come by globally, which means they can easily jump ship to a competitor for higher pay or bonuses or a better work environment. Engineering managers must create a stimulating work environment for these engineers and technicians, gain their respect and trust, direct them, control them, and help them in any way possible. Greater retention of these individuals can be attained by creating a stable environment with planned changes, by having enough manpower to cover all shifts, by awarding time off after necessary all-nighters, and by helping them maintain a stable personal life by keeping a respectable distance. Engineering managers can also keep them at the leading edge of their technology by sending them to appropriate technical conferences and shows.

FIGURE 1.2 A multidisciplinary, global, flat engineering organization for a medium-size production company located in the United States.

FIGURE 1.3 Engineering organization chart for a medium-size wafer production company in the United States.

It is not possible to utilize a global pool of engineering freelancers for a wafer production company such as the one shown in Figure 1.3; however, it is possible to have a multidisciplinary, flat engineering organization as shown in Figure 1.4. In an engineering organization operating in a 24/7 workplace environment, it is necessary to have proper manpower planning that allows for backup when a subordinate resigns, goes on vacation, becomes sick, goes on maternity leave, etc. Such manpower planning should strive to maintain the normal stress levels of the team; however, there will be times when the department is unavoidably short handed, and the employees must put in 70- or 80-hour work weeks. Under high-stress conditions, the leadership must be caring and provide incentives such as extra time off or bonuses to the engineers so they do not experience burnout. There is no overtime pay for engineering professionals in most companies.

We live in a global economy. It is difficult to imagine an engineering manager who does not deal daily with multiple countries and cultures. The management of international engineering teams, customers, subcontractors, and regulatory and governmental agencies is growing more sophisticated, complex, and challenging. An engineering organization for a medium-size international production company is shown in Figure 1.5. In this case, the U.S.-based company’s products are developed in the United States but are produced in Malaysia and South Korea for customers in Japan. The engineering organization is structured under a U.S.-based vice president of engineering. The three engineering directors under the vice president of engineering are U.S. based, Malaysia based, and South Korea based. Two of the four engineering managers are in Malaysia and the other two are in South Korea. Under this international engineering structure, there are 11 subordinates in the United States under the product development and customer engineering director, four of whom are Malaysia based and two Japan based. There are 23 subordinates in Malaysia and 34 subordinates in South Korea.

Two Japanese engineers who support the company’s Japanese customers reside in Japan and report to the engineering director in the United States. Each year, the two Japanese engineers come to the company headquarters in the United States for three months to get trained in new products and new technology. They have good command of the English language. They sometimes bring their families with them and stay in company apartments close to the U.S. facilities. The rest of the year, teleconferencing and videoconferencing allow daily communication between the Japanese engineers and the director of engineering in the United States. The Japanese engineers also visit the company’s manufactu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Author
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Typical Engineering Organizations
• Chapter 2 Hiring Engineers and Technicians for an Engineering Organization
• Chapter 3 Mentoring Engineers and Technicians in an Engineering Organization
• Chapter 4 Work Assignments for Engineers and Technicians
• Chapter 5 Meetings
• Chapter 6 Keeping Up with Technology and a Changing World
• Chapter 7 Engineering Department Performance Reviews
• Chapter 8 Laying Off, Firing, or Losing a Team Member
• Chapter 9 Essential Engineering Tools and Workplace Environment
• Chapter 10 Engineering Team Building
• Chapter 11 Upper Management, Customer, Subcontractor, and Regulatory Relationships
• Index