Electronic product development is a specialist field. It requires not only a good understanding of the technology - it demands a thorough knowledge of the whole process of taking an electronic design through the various stages and making it available for sale.
This includes the design of the enclosure, making sure that the product can be manufactured economically and that component tolerances have been taken into account. A good product designer also has to take into account regulatory requirements such as emissions and safety, make sure that the product is documented accurately for production and be confident that it can be easily supported in the field.
Universities and colleges are very good at giving their students a solid grounding in the technology such as circuit design and analysis, embedded software and using the latest design tools. Graduates are very capable of producing prototype designs that work. What they learn when they start in industry is how to turn those prototypes into commercial products that sell at a price that generates a profit for their companies.
In other professions like medicine, accountancy and law, this gap is filled formally during the training phase. Practitioners have to work in a hospital, in an accountancy or law firm before they can qualify and start to practice. However in engineering, this is not normally part of the requirements. Graduates often are put to work designing products without any grounding in the many aspects of product design that will help them to produce winning products.
What I have attempted to do in this book is to try and prepare the new graduate for the world of engineering. Throughout the book I have taken examples from products that I have worked on. In over 35 years in engineering I have been fortunate to be involved in the design and launch of more than 30 different products. I have also worked on a number of other products as a consultant. Many were successful but some did not quite live up to expectations. I am keen to pass on the lessons learnt from all these experiences to a new generation of engineers.
Seggy T Segaran
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