By Qi Dan
EG1471 E25
Innovation plays an important role in today’s engineering design. However, in the paper “Innovation and performance in engineering design”[1], Salter and Torbett indicate that misunderstandings in performance measurement of engineering design do limit the innovative potential in many industries. Some firms focus too much on the financial benefit of their products while ignoring other essentials in engineering design such as user friendliness, safety and durability. Addressing this problem, Salter and Torbett [1] examine different approaches to assess engineering design based on interviews and feedbacks from both individuals and organizations.
First of all, commercial benefit is the most common concern when assessing engineering design as there is a distinct connection between performance failures and economic failures. Meanwhile, some claim that the best engineered product may not be the ones bring the most financial benefit. In this case, too much reliance on financial indicators would probably limit innovation. Furthermore, time as an indicator of performance may also restrict engineers’ creativity and even cause stresses on them. Similarly, due to the failure of current feedback mechanism, engineers have to conform to others’ view sometimes. The three factors discussed above shows that many industries are still in urgent need of an appropriate environment to promote innovation.
Designing is a complex process which involves collaboration between different departments. Although financial factors do create incentive for designing, other methods of performance measurement should also be involved in the process of engineering design. More importantly, to fully assess a product requires a closer interaction between designers and other department of a project.
Reference:
[1] A. Salter and R. Torbett, Innovation and Performance in Engineering Design. Construction Management and Economics. Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2003.
(XUE YUAN comments)
ReplyDeleteTruly, engineering design which makes the most financial benefit may not be the most important ones for the whole society. Many great innovations in history were not profitable at all. Just take Michael Faraday as an example, when he first found the law of electromagnetic induction, it seems useless. However, in the modern society,we almost can see electromagnetic induction everywhere from the TV set in our home to the spacecraft. So, we can say that those seemingly useless designs may finally point to great innovations.
As far as I am concerned, our society should not always focus on those engineering designs which make profit currently. Much more attention should be paid to some unvalued inventions, which may be the potential innovations.
By saying the above things, I do not mean that we should give up the financial profitable designs and only concern about the "potential innovations". Of course, we should still pay much attention to the profitable engineering designs since, according to the article, "commercial benefit is the most common concern when assessing engineering design". However, we at least should do some positive things to keep those "potential innovations" going on.
(comment from Alfred)
ReplyDeleteI think that nowadays many engineered product are leaning more towards financial benefit because of the need of the society. Today, people around the world are more concern with the economic aspects things. For company that produce the product would want to able to yield the most profit from it and as for consumers, they wanted products that are economical. Due to the demand of the world thus the product are more geared towards the financial benefits.
However, I think that even though the needs of the society cause engineered products to be produce based more on the economical aspect, we should never neglect the other factors that are of equal importance such as environmental issues. I think that if a product is very useful and has a lot financial benefits but is not environmental friendly is also not a good invention.
Although there many factors limiting an engineers when producing a product, I think that such restrictions is essential. The restrictions if taken positively would become a drive for the engineers to have better inventions. However, I do agree that these restrictions limit creativity, inevitably they are still essential.