Engineering and Business Practices

1. Introduction
Key issues that differentiate the US and EU are:

• the size of the national markets - US about 250 million people, largest EU country about 50 million.
• regulation philosophy - US less restrictive than EU countries
• cultural - Majority of people in US live in small towns, majority people in main EU countries live in big cities - implications for marketing products
• space - much more free space in US than EU - has implications for transport infrastructure and choices

Before going on to discuss how these differences have influenced engineering and business it is worth saying something about how engineering and businesses have developed in recent years.

2. Developments and Trends in Manufacturing, Engineering and Business

Starting a while ago!

Until about 1700 manufacturing was carried out on an individual basis by skilled craftsmen and their apprentices.
The quality of their products was dependent upon their skill and each product was sightly different.
If you wanted a large project completing, eg building a cathedral, then you employed lots of skilled craftsmen and apprentices. The only assistance to manual effort was from horses or water.
In the middle ages the height of cathedrals increased, until Chartreuse fell down - the ability to make and build things ran ahead of our understanding of the underlying science and engineering - this continued until comparatively recent times.
Steam engine introduced in late 1700s - but individual manufacture meant no 2 where the same.
Canals were built which allowed the slow transport of heavy goods.
Repeatability only became easy when the first lathe was fitted with a lead screw - in 1800.
In the mid 1800s steam trains were developed, but there was an average of 2 boiler explosions per week, usually resulting in fatalities.
Early 1900 Henry Ford introduced mass production - Model T
Developments in materials and engines and reliability, aviation began.
Mid 1950s development of first digital computers, opened the way for computer aided:

• design
• analysis
• simulation
• manufacture

As the complexity of products has increased to meet the ever greater consumer expectations, it has become increasingly necessary to bring new products to the market in the minimum possible time while ensuring that they have a very high reliability and are 'better' than the competition.

The adjective better is deliberately in quotations as quantification and measurement are essential if a product is actually to be superior. Auto manufacturers have been at the fore front of using focus groups and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to try to ensure their vehicles are the 'best' in class. This has enabled auto manufacturers to get over the allegation, current some years ago, that their cars were designed by men for men.

The enormous investment needed to bring a new product to the market and the need to do this quickly has led to the widespread use of concurrent or simultaneous engineering, where new product development is overseen by a project team with a wide range of expertise. This has replaced the original 'serial' approach where designers passed work to materials engineers then onto manufacturing engineers and then changes where made and designs were modified and went through the loop again and often several times, taking a great deal of time in the process.

The enormous investment needed for many projects has led to companies forming partnerships, similar to Airbus in the early days, to share costs and rewards.
To maintain success companies are tending to specialise in doing a limited range of things that they are good at and buying in products and services from other experts. Buying in of computer support services and logistics are widespread in the EU and also I gather in the US. The disadvantage of this approach is that it can leave companies vulnerable to sudden collapse if they don't see a significant change in technology coming.

3. Consumer Trends
The ability of manufacturers to offer better products has moved customer requirements up, consumers want the product to meet their needs very closely and to have a high reliability and be economical to use. Increasing use of CAE has enabled more and more companies to meet these increasing demands.

I think there is little doubt that US consumers are more demanding than EU consumers. For example bank transfers, standing orders in the UK take several days (during which time the bank 'borrows, your money). When I asked about this delay at my bank, it was conceded that there was no way this would be tolerated in the US but as they could get away with it in the UK they continued to 'help themselves'!

4. Contrasting Industries
The large size of the US market has led to the development of some very large companies in the aero and automotive sectors. However to gain the maximum profits these companies placed emphasis on very large production which led to inflexibility and poor response to market trends and changes. The big US auto manufacturers, Ford and GM, have been involved in extensive programmes to change their approaches and enable them to become more responsive. These sorts of problems have also afflicted the larger EU manufacturers but to a lesser extent.
A comparatively unusual and mainly effective philosophy has been followed by Porsche, whose cars

have mainly been based on competition success and supply has, for most of the time, been slightly less than demand and quality has been high. There have been very few 'new' models, although models are regularly improved and changed slightly. It might be said that the company in 'Engineering led' rather than 'Marketing led'.
This approach has led to Porsche being very profitable for most of its existence.

Harley Davidson, now 100 years old, has a philosophy based on a limited number of models that buyers can customise to meet their specific requirements. US auto companies are looking at customising as a way of increasing their sales and profits. Although they enjoyed some competition success in their early years, this has not figured in their recent development.

In Europe, probably the best known motorcycle manufacturer is Ducati.

Their popularity is based upon competition success, but they only started growing significantly when they improved their product quality (initiated when they were owned by the Texas Pacific Group) and now three quarters of their production is a street bike that does not have a competition focus.

In the field of aerospace Boeing has for decades been the largest manufacturers of civil aircraft. It was realised in Europe some 40 years ago that if Europe were to be able to compete they would have to collaborate. The first collaboration, between Britain and France on the Concorde supersonic passenger plane was very costly and has enjoyed only limited success.
Concorde
However it should be pointed out that the US spent almost as much money on a competitive endeavour and did not finish up with a single flying supersonic passenger plane.

However Europe learned many lessons from the Concorde episode and the Airbus consortium came in to existence and recently their annual sales exceeded those of Boeing.

To be successful it is necessary now for companies to be both efficient and agile as well as being able to produce good designs.