I worked for Northrop Grumman as a project manufacturing engineer for about eight years before I retired. (And then got bored and started my own business that I ran for another 16 years.) The job of a manufacturing engineer is to take the ideas and drawings created in the Engineering Department and design the tooling, processes and procedures needed to actually produce the parts. For years, manufacturing people have been begging to be included in the design process so new designs could be more “manufacturable” from the start. It has only been in recent years that their pleas have finally been heard.
One day at Northrop it was announced that a new procedure was being initiated — Congruent Engineering — which would include Manufacturing, Purchasing, Sales, Logistics and other related departments’ personnel in the design process. Most of us “outsiders” shouted “Hooray” at the news but we also felt that Engineering wasn’t too keen on the idea.
Soon afterward, I was assigned to a secret new project that would include trying out the Congruent Engineering idea. We gathered in a large room and began discussing the new design and its specifications. Without revealing any of the secret details (I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you afterward) one particular feature included an engineering design solution that I thought would be less than worthless when the device was used in actual battlefield conditions. And I said so.
When you open your mouth like that — especially when you’re surrounded by engineers whose design you are criticizing — you’d better have an alternate idea ready because you are sure to get the response, “Have you got a better idea?” Fortunately I did and I got up in front of the group and explained it. One of the engineers immediately attacked the idea and went on at length to voice his objections.
In spite of that, my idea was eventually incorporated into the final design. Not only that; the company applied for and received a patent for the idea naming me as the inventor. (When you work for a large company, one of the conditions of hire is that any products or processes that you invent become the company’s property.) But because this was a “team effort” every member of the Congruent Engineering team was also named as the inventor.
And now here’s the rest of the story. Because he was also a member of the Congruent Engineering team, the engineer who was so vehemently against my idea from the start and fought me all the way, was also included on the patent because he was one of the “inventors.”
— Paul Burri is an entrepreneur, inventor, columnist, engineer and iconoclast. He is not in the advertising business but he is a small business counselor with the Santa Barbara chapter of the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE).