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Engineers – Quotes

“Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.” James Michener

“Engineers are behind the cars we drive, the pills we pop and the way we power our homes.” James Dyson

“Silicon Valley has evolved a critical mass of engineers and venture capitalists and all the support structure – the law firms, the real estate, all that – that are all actually geared toward being accepting of startups.” Elon Musk

“I’ve actually found the image of Silicon Valley as a hotbed of money-grubbing tech people to be pretty false, but maybe that’s because the people I hang out with are all really engineers.” Linus Torvalds

“I think one problem we’ve had is that people who are smart and creative and innovative as engineers went into financial engineering.” Walter Isaacson

“The South produced statesmen and soldiers, planters and doctors and lawyers and poets, but certainly no engineers and mechanics. Let Yankees adopt such low callings.” Margaret Mitchell

Business travel

Business travel via airplane or automobile remains extremely common in America despite rising airline ticket and gasoline prices. Businesses remain committed to approving business travel, appreciating the importance of face-to-face contact.

Although companies often work to cut costs, they are increasingly thinking about travel in terms of its carbon footprint. These companies are responding to customers’ increasing demands for sustainable business practices. Some companies are scheduling longer, less frequent business trips to cut down on air travel or using communications technology to decrease the need for frequent air travel.

POSs

The book American Gods by Neil Gaiman, follows the adventures of a man called Shadow as he travels across America. At one point during his voyage, he finds himself stranded in the middle of the Wisconsin, attempting to rent or buy a car.

As it turns out, there is nowhere nearby for him to rent, so he has to settle for buying. In an attempt to find someone willing to sell him a car, he tries talking to a woman manning the till at a gas station:

“Car died a few miles down the road. It was a pieceashit if you’ll pardon my language,“ said Shadow.

‘Pee-Oh-Esses,’ she said. ‘Yup. That’s what my brother-in-law calls ’em. He buys and sells cars in a small way. He’ll call me up, say Mattie, I just sold another Pee-Oh-Ess. Say, maybe he’d be interested in your old car. For scrap or something.’”

Eventually, Shadow meets the brother-in-law, and although he has plenty of money with him, at this point in the story he only needs to drive about 500 miles, so he tries to buy the cheapest car that could take him the full way.

“The piece of shit he chose was a 1983 Chevy Nova, which he bought, with a full tank of gas, for four hundred and fifty dollars. It had almost a quarter of a million miles on the clock, and smelled faintly of bourbon, tobacco, and more strongly of something that might well have been bananas. He couldn’t tell what color it was, under the dirt and the snow. . . The piece of shit had a radio, but nothing happened when he turned it on.”

Nevertheless, despite the poor performance of the vehicle, Shadow was content with his purchase because it was cheap.

The Image of Exclusivity

In his May 12, 2015 article Taking the Fast Lane in the Handelsblatt Global Edition, Christian Schnell (schnell means fast in German) wrote about Porsche’s success in the U.S.

“Porsche keeps setting sales records in the United States, with double-digit percentage growth over four years. Of 190,000 Porsche’s sold last year, 47,000 were delivered to U.S. customers. The brand, part of the Volkswagen Group, has grown sales by double-digit figures for four years straight.”

Porsche is a niche player. It has a U.S. market share of only 0.4 percent. “It shouldn’t become much more than that to protect the car’s image of exclusivity, in Porsche’s view.”

“We have not set a figure as a target. Instead, we want to get a sense of how much we can expand the brand,” said Porsche-CEO Matthias Müller. “We’d rather sell a car less than one too many.”

Schnell noted: “At other companies, such elitist thinking has led to conflicts.” In 2014 the chief executive of Ferrari, Luca die Montezemolo, said he only wanted to build 7,000 cars per year. “The statement angered Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Ferrari’s parent company Fiat.” Not long thereafter, Montezemolo was out of a job.

It was an incident which the Porsche-CEO could not understand. “If Mr. Marchionne thinks he can turn Ferrari into a mass market brand I can only say: ‘A very warm welcome’.”

Clever

Intelligent. Latin intelligens, to recognize, understand, discern; smart, talented, capable; think abstractly, use reason, then act.

Clever. From English clever. Intelligent, tactical; flexible, adaptable; to recognize all available options.

Smartphone. An English term quickly adopted by the German people because it so succinctly describes the product. There is no German equivalent.

Mitdenken. Literally think with. To think independently, to anticipate; thoughtful, reflective.

What is good service?

On World Quality Day – November 14, 2013 – the German Society for Quality presented the results of their survey on service. Reliability, with 92 points, was ranked highest by German consumers in terms of most important aspect of service.

“When Germans think of service they think of classic German virtues: reliability, puncutality (meeting schedule), and quality,” said Dr. Wolfgang Kaerkes, the society’s head.

Reliability is one of the very top characteristics of the German product philosophy. It is no wonder that they focus on reliability when developing products.

Better and better

“The reliability of a product is understood to be how verlässlich (reliable, sound, solid, trustworthy, sure) are its functionalities at any given time.” This somewhat cumbersome definition communicates clearly what is of great importance to German consumers.

No wonder, therefore, that German manufacturers leave as little as possible to chance when developing their products. The Association of German Engineers organizes expert conferences on a on-going basis on the topic of technical reliability and maintains a working group on the subject. The Technical University of Hamburg has an institute with the same name – Zuverlässigkeitstechnik – literally Reliability Engineering.

It is no coincidence that the legendary Miele washer is known throughout the world for its reliability and quality, a product based on gewissenhafter (painstaking, diligent, meticulous) research.

A family-owned and -run company, Miele’s motto is Immer Besser – Better and Better, not only in the sense of striving to be better than the competition, but even more so in striving to offer the best Technik – technical solutions, engineering. Very much in the tradition of German Zuverlässigkeitsforschung – reliability research.

Miele dishwasher:

Business Majors

Business has long been a cornerstone of American culture. The American Dream is typically associated with the ability to start with almost nothing, and through the virtues of business, to rise to great wealth and social stature.

Although the U.S. is no longer the country with the largest rate of social mobility in the world Americans still hold business savvy and an ability to rise in social stature in high prestige.

The most popular major for American university students is business, with approximately 22% of graduates. Science and engineering are the least popular majors, with approximately 5% of American students choosing engineering, and only 1.4% choosing physical sciences.

As a result of this business prestige, in every American engineer you’ll find a businessperson – someone who’s always looking to get the best for less, and will never consider quality without also considering the cost necessary to achieve it.

Malcolm Baldrige Award

This award was established in 1987 by the U.S. Congress in order to raise awareness of quality management and to recognize American companies that use successful quality management systems.

Initially, awards were only given in 3 categories: manufacturing, service businesses, and small businesses. However, in 1999 education and healthcare categories were added, and finally in 2007 a government and nonprofit category was added.

Up to 3 awards can be given in each category annually, and the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology manages the award. Recipients are chosen based on their performance in seven areas:

Leadership: How upper management leads the organization, and how the organization leads within the community.

Strategic planning: How the organization establishes and plans to implement strategic directions.

Customer and market focus: How the organization builds and maintains strong, lasting relationships with customers.

Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management: How the organization uses data to support key processes and manage performance.

Human resource focus: How the organization empowers and involves its workforce.

Process management: How the organization designs, manages and improves key processes.

Business/organizational performance results: How the organization performs in terms of customer satisfaction, finances, human resources, supplier and partner performance, operations, governance and social responsibility, and how the organization compares to its competitors.

Try anything once

The idea that people should try everything once is deeply ingrained in American thinking. In fact, Americans are so hesitant to choose a definite course of action without trying all of the alternatives, that Winston Churchill once said “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.”

Many famous Americans possessed of a try everything once spirit. American actress Mae West once said “I’ll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure.” In 1920, G.B. Manly offered to take American humorist Will Rogers on an airplane ride. After the ride, Rogers remarked: “Try anything once. Try some things oftener. When you goin’ again?”

American President Franklin D. Roosevelt also had the willingness to try anything – something which is now said to have greatly attributed to his ability to help America out of the Great Depression. FDR’s wife Eleanor once commented about him that “He recognized the difficulties and often said that, while he did not know the answer, he was completely confident that there was an answer and that one had to try until one either found it for himself or got it from someone else.”

Americans take a similar viewpoint towards products. They don’t want something that will last forever, but just long enough for them to try it, and see how it compares to other products that they’ve used. Then they want to move on to try another product.