CAD Managers

[#1]

We are looking at making some changes to our engineering staff/department as a whole. I am looking to see if anyone has any ideas to make a good engineering department great.

Thanks in advance for your ideas.

Mike

[#2]

Margarita machine always helps

What's wrong with the environment/department now?

[#3]

Uhh,

What kind of engineering?

[#4]

Turn the question around --  and ask what are the best ways to destroy/demotivate a groupd of engineers and tech people.

then do the opposite.

Why?  because it always easier to see what doesn't work, because failure creates problems that are much more visible than something sailing smoothly along.

[#5]

Margarita's would certainly be a great idea.

We have a decentralized engineering team. Each engineer reports to a different boss but still has a engineering team leader. It creates a conflict when the engineering team leader asks an engineer to do some work and then the other boss steps in and says no do this because it suits their needs instead of the needs of the company.

Thanks,

Mike

[#6]

We engineer displays for the retail industry.

Thanks,

[#7]

I understand what you are saying but my proposal actually changes the engineering team as a whole and pulls the team back together under one boss instead of multiple bosses leading in different directions causing problems. This is why I was asking what works best for your engineering team.

What type of model for an engineering team do you follow?

Thanks,

Mike

[#8]

a Civil design shop) reported to a different engineer. Each engineer in turn reported to one of 8-9 different "vice-presidents". These engineering "teams" were also responsible for getting their own projects, this lead to multiple teams going after the same project on more than one occasion. It was horrible, with many decisions being made based on what was best for a single team than the company and there was very little cooperation in the company.

Now I work for a place that has a single engineering department, we have two supervisors, one is the actual head of the whole dept and the other is like a senior assistant. We each individually have specific areas of a project we “specialize” in to get something out the door. Though we can and do work on every conceivable part of a project if needed. The team work at this place is MUCH better and there is less stress involved in getting things done. For instance if we suddenly need to get a project done “RIGHT NOW” all of us jump in to help no problem. In the decentralized model that isn’t as easy and may even be counter productive.

tl;dr version

One centralized team is more condusive to a well oiled project.

Lance