Asian Inspiration

The economic success in the US has been admired across the world for a long time. But in the 1970s, we realized that our automobile companies were producing inferior products. Our cars were poorly made with materials that rusted and paint that faded.  They got 10 miles to the gallon and lasted about 100,000 miles.  The increase in oil prices resulted in big increases in gasoline prices and US citizens bought foreign cars to get 30 miles to the gallon.

 

The Japanese auto companies got busy and designed their cars to include the improvements we wanted in the US. By the 1980s, Japanese cars were pouring in to the US and that trend continued when Toyota designed the Prius in 2000 with a hybrid engine that got 60 miles to the gallon. In 2005 the Prius was re-designed and was perfect and spoke volumes about Japanese engineering. The Japanese also dominated in developing auto-insertion equipment for electronics manufacturing in the 1980s.

 

German cars also poured into the US in the 1980s and the Mercedes replaced the Cadillac as the standard in luxury cars. Milling machines were mostly German.

 

India concentrated on IT and software and China concentrated on electronics engineering.  We recruited them from US universities if their English skills were good enough, because their grades were high. These Asian students had the discipline and interest to do well as engineers and software developers. There were enough high GPA US students to recruit at the best schools, but there were more mediocre US engineers who graduated from mediocre US engineering schools. The US did produce better engineers in the 1960s, who were inspired by the Space Program, but that time passed and these engineers have retired.

 

By the 1990s, Chinese engineers had established themselves as excellent engineers and when they offered electronics manufacturing for half the cost, US companies moved this manufacturing to China and other countries.

 

My favorite experience with Chinese engineers came from my consulting relationship with Firearms Training Systems (now Meggitt Training Systems).  They developed the FATS weapons simulator in the 1980s. FATS recruited Chinese Software Engineers from US campuses. These engineers were excellent and are still there. They had MS degrees in EE and Math with high GPAs. The simulator is software intensive and requires the ability to deal with ongoing configuration control to deal with component obsolescence endless Windows modifications and kernel repair. The simulator software resides on a driver-rich PC. Real weapons are converted to simulator weapons to shoot at movies created for military and law enforcement.  This saves the cost of bullets and allows training to occur without going to a live-fire range.

 

The lesson for US students is that engineering work that requires the highest levels of training will increase in the US. The BSEE has the best Math preparation, but the MSEE and MS Math degrees may be required. Companies will be under pressure to “hire American”, so it’s time to get ready to compete with your foreign classmates. Companies will continue to hire the best engineers they can find.

 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader