Who Designs Cables in Your Company?

What do you mean by -

"we assigned the cable design jobs to the junior engineers or the guys we didn't want to work on circuit design"

- or better still -

"Cables that carry high-speed signals must have controlled impedances and engineered terminations to prevent reflections. Even so, I bet that many companies still assign cable designs to their junior or less capable engineers"?

Further -

"Do you think it's a mistake to assign this job to junior engineers?"

Sounds to me if these incompetents are the ones who do the all the cable designs, don't they?

As long as they do a good job it should not matter, should it?

Since you're in charge of them I guess you should make the executive decission.

The most successful model I preferred to work under is the one where you have an engineering or project manager. Under him is a mid-level engineer who directs entry level personnel. This allows each person to do their job and be trained as time goes by.

Work is segmented out so that the entry level persons can do entry level work and that work is checked and worked by the mid-level manager and his work is reviewed by the project manager. When done correctly, training and evaluation can be done to all levels and decisions on promotions and training are in the forefront.

All entry level personnel are trained in each area of the company's product. This can be done by moving them from one team to another under the direction of the project managers. No entry level or junior engineer had the right to select the type of work he preferred to do. He is there to be trained and to do the work he is assigned. Preferred work is an option for the mid-level managers. Those mangers are selected by their project managers.

We use this method to establish continuity in the company. Suppose a plane crashes into your building and kills off 1/2 of your staff. If the company has personnel trained in all operations of your company you can continue your work. If you only have persons working in preffered positions, now all surviving employees and the company are in great peril.

In my group, cable design is handled by our best analog engineer - the one who does our EMI and lightning strike analysis. The actual schematic entry is done by a junior engineer. The layout of the cables and the creation of the equipment assembly drawings is done by an experienced Pro-E engineer.

On other projects that I know about, your scenario is the norm. Although even there it tends to be something of a specialized field - there's quite a bit to know in aerospace cabling.

Cable design by electrical engineers. Wow, what a concept. I work at a synchrotron research facility. Nearly all of the cabling here is either designed and assembled by electronic technicians (invariably these work) or post-doc researchers (sometimes these can be scary). The concept that a brilliant person in one field can do anything has always eluded me. I do not want my dentist to cut my hair or vice versa. Usually I get a blank stare from these scientists when I mention transmission line concepts. Once I did burst one poor chap's bubble. He almost proposed a research project based on the untapped information unanticipated artifacts from high speed diffraction signals. After replacing the high impedance terminated multi-conductor cable with a real engineered harness, the reflections and research project disappeared.

Quote: "When I was an engineering manager, we assigned the cable design jobs to the junior engineers or the guys we didn't want to work on circuit design."

Response: I CAN RELATE!!! Yes, we do tend to delegate the more menial tasks to junior or less capable engineers. It is the preferred path of least resistance. Wire & cable technology may be perceived as a lesser task, but it's a critical task, not to be taken lightly.

Whether cable & wire technology or other electrical distribution designs, I personally think the best success-strategy is to assign not only non-critical design tasks, but more critical ones to young junior engineers and allow them to fail in the "draft" design stages. Of course, checks and balances follow and the job is correct before it goes out the door.

The path to success is by having senior designers perform a review and approval (or rejection) of those junior engineer's design preparations. The junior engineers should be forced into "getting it right." The final product should be correct and the junior engineer's knowledge is effectively strengthened.

I think we're poised for great success in building-up America's power industry compared to the design efforts of 25-30 years ago. Our greatest resource is these young junior engineers and it's up to us to cultivate them. They have a much greater path to success than we did in the past.

Skigalini