Major Skills A Design Engineer Should Have

From my experience the following are the major skills an engineering designer should have

1. Hands-on understanding of how things work.

What is wrong in India...

Indians, especially the educated people have an aversion for manual work. This may be because of availability of cheap manpower, or long history of caste structure which says certain people have to do certain kind of work.

For example, we never try our hands in plumbing, electrical works or any work which creates a holistic understanding of how things are put together and how mechanisms work.

Other aspect is self assembly kits which are very popular in the West, which also helps us to understand how things work.

Because of this lack of inclination to hands-on learning, most of the engineering graduate who comes out of college has little skills and no hands-on experience on making things work.

In skill courses, we can encourage students to have the habit of working with hands; it works best if they are solving a real world problem like selecting a suitable pump for getting water from the well and actually fitting it.

They can even fit a fan on their own or get the furniture assembled at home or even paint their homes with actual area calculations and budgeting.

Next step can be, they can work for a few weeks in local car service station as an apprentice.

These stuff can help students to acquire problem-solving skills and also in creating a habit of working with hands and practice hand-eye coordination.

2. Following processes and documentation

Indian students do not develop these skills because of the lack of discipline in the society, like following lane discipline on road.

This skill can be developed by having to do the project and budget planning of the project assigned. Students should be encouraged to create milestones and create documentation records for the same. At home too, they can do proper project management and documentation of home renovation or even a decision making process of buying new TV or furniture or car.

Making this a habit will go a long way in making a good engineer.

3. Appreciation of Engineering and mathematical principles

Most of the teaching of science subjects are done without connecting them to real life applications. I used to wonder why we are studying matrix in Mathematics.

If we can connect the matrix of Mathematics to FEA analysis of engineering in the class itself, students can surely appreciate its relevance.

Other examples are, Fourier transformation can be explained with its real life use of converting problems from time domain to frequency domain.

We should have some refresher course of appreciation of Mathematics and Physics principles to real life engineering applications. 

4. Selling an idea.

Somehow there is a taboo attached to selling in Indian society.

Selling happens at every level. It does not come naturally to us.So we should develop this skill. Students should be asked to prepare a proposal of their design project for a prospective client. If possible, they can make the sales presentations of their projects to final customer.

Original Credits : Author of the above article is Sri. Premlal P - an Engineering Design Manager with 25 years experience in Automotive R&D, who can still roll-up his sleeves and become Design Engineer anytime.