974. Weight Engineering – An Opinionnaire

Paper

Abstract

A weight engineer strives to be the master of many skills of engineering. Besides being a good engineer, he has to be a mathematician and psychologist. It is an uphill task to determine the status of weight engineer and his functions in the current corporate organization.
Based on the above, three surveys were done to determine the status of weight engineering with respect to various other specialties of engineering. The existence of a weight group, its authority, functions and responsibilities, a weight educational program and the SAWE membership of various organizations was the second objective of these surveys. The third and final objective was to determine the need of training in various areas of weight engineering.
The first survey was directed, in the form of a questionnaire, to all people attending the 31st Annual SAWE conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The second survey, same questionnaire, was sent to top executives of 150 corporations throughout the country. Five industries, Airline, Marine, Defense, Automotive, and General Manufacturer, were represented in these two surveys. The third and final survey was done at Lockheed-California Co., Burbank, among weight engineers, weight engineering supervisors and non-weight engineering supervisors, to determine the need of training in 10 different aspects of weight engineering.
The data collected can be very useful to SAWE to review its membership expansion campaign, to various organizations for comparison of industry wide practice, and for training of new employees or retraining of existing ones.