Manufacturing vs. Design Engineering
I have an 8 year background in manufacturing for the automotive industry (following TS-16949 stds., APQP, and submitting AIAG PPAPs). Recently I changed companies to one that serves the aerospace military and commerical markets with a group of young design engineers who spend a lot of time at sales trade shows, lunches, and conventions.
I am running into what I believe is a strange situtation but I would like others to weigh as a sanity check
1) Essentially my company at the direction of the Product Realization Director (Design Engineering Manager in any other company) has split all engineering responsibilities between Production and Prototype. The design engineering group is 95% focused on new products and refuses to work on anything Production related unless it's a major situation (recalls or stop production sort of deals). The onus is on manufacturing engineering for all technical and quality issues, such as drawing updates, design changes, supplier quality issues, cosmetic concerns, and failure analysis. Prior to production Mfg. Engineering is responsible for process documentation and production fixtures/tooling.
2a) The NPI process consists of 6 Stages from New Idea to Full Production. The first 3 stages are 100% business and design engineering focused. In most cases Production and Manufacturing are not consulted until after Management approves the Critical Design Review essentially locking the design and after production tools/molds have been already purchased. There are no formal deliverables at this CDR and it's usually a bunch of slides with CAD images. When asked where the data was Ive been told the engineers keep notebooks and have thoroughly vetted the product.
2b) Starting at Stage 4 the burden shifts to Manufacturing to develop a process to build the product and there are usually issues because the design engineers use 3D printed parts or only have to build 1 assembly or do not run any production tests. Any push back to move mfg. concerns up a stage or two has been received as trying to slow the process down or "one up" the design engineers. Egos are also a big problem. Feedback such as incorporating DFM and Lean into the design are ignored.
3) Drawings. The design group either lacks the understanding or drive to add dimensions or test requirements to drawings. Most assembly drawings are nothing more than pictures and BOMs. When asked why they claim the 50-100 product spec is the guide and adding anything to the drawing is redundant. However in production an operator or test tech doesn't have access or time to read that document. Therefore alot of design info is pushed into the work instructions, but this doesn't help purchased items. So in most cases mfg. engineering waits until it's in Production and adds the requirements and notes....and then parts routinely fail inspections because they were never checked before for those items.
Is this the new normal or am I dealing with lazy/uninformed engineers? I started my career with the thought process of considering mfg. while doing the design, but any mention of something like APQP literally has coworkers telling me it costs too much and that people won't accept it...HELP.