Attention engineers...What type are you and why?

[Jay TenBrink]

I am a mechanical engineer with a BSME from Michigan State University in 1983.

I wanted to be an inventor when I grew up. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I learned what an engineer was. Suffering from low self esteem and mediocre grades, I didn’t think I could ever make it into the College of Engineering. My undergraduate advisor didn’t think so either. Fortunately there were a few people in my life that did believe in me and through many years of hard work I became a mechanical engineer. It was the biggest achievement in my life and changed my life forever. Thus, I take the title of engineer very seriously.

I’ve been at Chrysler (now DaimlerChrysler) since1983 and have had a number of different engineering jobs. I have worked on sheet metal, body hardware and chassis. I have worked in design, development, test labs, and at assembly plants in resident engineering. I have also worked in a staff position doing budgets. I have supervised engineers and designers for a many years. I am currently a manager in chassis engineering.

I manage engineers as they design and develop new products and resolve technical and non-technical issues. My engineers are responsible to know everything as it relates to their product: what the customers’ requirements are, how it is designed, tested, manufactured, assembled, serviced, packaged, etc. They are responsible for formulating test plans, time lines, ordering parts, visiting suppliers, resolving issues, etc. It’s very demanding work.

A large part of my job is managing engineers and technical problem solving teams. This requires strong root cause analysis skills as well as many of those disciplines engineers learn in school: physics, chemistry, strength of materials, statics, dynamics, heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and more. I can honestly say one could not learn all the skills “on the job” to function in this environment. You can be expected to remember everything, but it’s amazing how much this stuff will come back to you even after many years.