Detroit auto industry still suffering from lack of CAD designer skill portability

Frank Sherosky, a name out of the past.

You certainly changed gears in your career. How in the heck did you end up as a writer?
Not that I had any doubt that anyone who managed to master the design system that GM used could be successful at any endeavor that he chose.

Frank, I hope that you and your family are well.

It certainly was a surprise to see my name in your list of capable design managers that you worked with but it also makes me proud that you thought so.

As you may already know, after I left Saturn burned out from fighting the same battles that you oviously fought yourself, I took it easy for a couple of years to give my brain a chance to recover and then I went back to work as a design manager. During my "second career" I was involved in electrical, hvac,body exteriors and just about everything else connected to automobile design.

In 1998 I was involved in the design of a prototype hybrid vehicle exactly like the Toyota Prius, which has received high praise. Well, they ended up cutting it up and scrapping it because they felt that it would never sell in the volumes required to make it pay. Meanwhile the Japanese government subsidized Toyota until the Prius started to make a profit and consequently Toyota received accolades from every auto critic as to how inventive they were as opposed to the "stodgy" American companies. If only the total truth would come out about the unfair practices that the Japanese and Korean companies used to try to take over the domestic auto market.

Please reply and fill me in on the rest of the Saturn alumni if you can.
Sincerely
Frank Guglielmi

Bravo,
Well said. I was a Board Draftsman. Began in the late 70’s as a “Runner”. Minded my Peas and Q’s and eventually became a “Detailer”. Took “Batavia” and followed that with the “Philpot” course. As my confidence was raising and I was about to go into “Layout”, along came a computer system called, “CADDS 4X”. Eager to go with the flow, I took the classes and moved into “Layout”.

Jumped job shops for a few dollars, took my new knowledge with me and landed Design work with a GM program. As luck would have it, a few years later, another company called offering training on another system called CATIA V4. Worked mid-nights, worked hard. Four years went by and a company called looking to train Designers in Unigraphics/Sun System. Off I went, for more money and training.

Chrysler would call in the mid 90’s. Was I interested in CATIA V4? Absolutely, says I. I barely got back up to speed and along comes CATIA V5. Granted CATIA V5 lasted a few more years than the others, but by 2009, the Italians had decided that NX was going to be the way to go. For years we’ve been trying to make the switch, migrating data from CATIA to NX. With no shortage of problems I might add.

Gone are the days of working under the wings of senior employees. Doing your time, making the grade and moving up to the next position. No more apprentice programs, etc. Sit down, do the work, go home and start all over the next day. You can sit next to someone for years and never know what their experience was, or even how to share their knowledge. What a crying shame.

Hi Frank,

You sure did nail that one my friend. I am a Senior Designer. My designing career started with Kelsey-Hayes in 1974 working on the board on Air Brakes and has ran the gamut from a small design shop in Swartz Creek doing work for Rochester and AC Spark Plug to contract inside GM and my current position at another company in Livonia.

I started in this profession right out of high school in 1974. I have NO college background at all. I have seen all of this happen, not only with the computer design area but in the lack of practical knowledge to APPLY to the design. I worked on the board, detailing and designing, until 1986 when the shop I worked for started their computer program with Applicon Systems. I left there in ’93, going into the GM Tech Center in Flint through a Contract house. Everything I knew in Applicon went right out the window! Training in Unigraphics V9 was difficult to say the least. There was no formal training. There should have been, it would have made the transition much smoother. After running UG for almost 18 years now (currently UG NX6) I can say I am very proficient but I also brought a basic design knowledge, ( i.e., Draft, stamping, forming, etc.) to the 3D world that I learned ON THE BOARD. Many of our “designers” today can run the system/s but so many of them lack an understanding of HOW to design a viable part… This all comes with experience I know but it is something that should be taught with a higher priority in the schools and colleges.

Thanks for taking your time to read this.

Mark A. Smakal
Senior Designer

Your article about the "Detroit auto industry still suffering from lack of CAD designer skill portability" was passed on to me to read and I just want to say that you hit the nail right on the head. Nothing but the truth. It would only make sense to have one common CAD system.

In todays world of looking for a design job it's like if you don't know "everything" they don't even want to finish the conversation. I have been out of work since 2006. Try finding a job in todays world when you are 62 years old. It's not going to happen easily.
It's definitely not like it was pre-CAD.

I was gratiously thrown on the street (basically freakin' blindsided) by GM in 2006 (@57 years old and not ready to retire) when there was a salaried employee reduction. (don't get me wrong, I am not bad-mouthing my previous employer because they say that is not the correct thing to do. Yeah right!) They always preached to us about honesty, loyalty, and integrity. I soon figured out what they taught us did not apply to them. The teaching was only the employee to the company, NOT the company to the employee. Other than working 5 years for VWof America I always worked on GM programs. The last 12 1/2 years direct for them. Didn't matter.

Back then things were going belly-up and if you were not fortunate enough to be kept working things would only get worse. The people that were working got trained in house in a couple of newer CAD versions. Now the people on the street are not only out of work, they are not up-to-date with the new versions. Now when you call on a job, if you are not up to date on the latest version...oh well. Sorry. Never used excel, huh, sorry. Next!

When working for GM we were trained in GD&T but we never actually had to apply it because there was an actual GD&T group. If our job needed it we just sent it to them and they did it. Simple. Now, if you don't know how to apply GD&T, and it is a requirement, you might as well not even call on the job posting. They don't even want to talk about sending you for 2 days re-training.

You were correct in saying that most (not all because some do) managers have no concept of what it takes to design a part in CAD. They thing, ok I need a new bracket, or a new hood, or a new whatever, that there is a button to push for that part and bingo, there it is! No idea.

They see these dog and pony shows from CAD instructers who make it look so simple. They demo the same part they have been doing for years and these managers or executives get so dazzled by it that they have to have it. These are the people, pretty much like what you said, came with their sheepskin but had no idea of design work. When I was working old job shops and places like VWof America, the head people came from the board. They worked their way up. Some engineers actually were from the board and didn't even have a degree, but...they had experience. We never had 1/2 of the processes they have today and looking back, things went much smoother.

As you can tell it's pretty frustrating.

We won't even talk about age discrimination because as you know, companies do not discriminate because of age.
Again, try being 62 and find a job.

Hi Frank,

I agree with the article you wrote on CAD designer portability, 100%. I am in the situation in Europe of being trained on the board and layout table in the late 70’s in Pressed Steel fisher. I was one of the last full intake of apprentices, there were 12 in my year, 8 in the year after, 4 or 5 the year after that and then it was all graduates from university. Who, through no fault of there own didn’t want to draw auto bits but wanted to become managers and that is what most of them did. So the apprentices where already being passed up when it came to promotion by the graduates.

I was one of the first in the Auto world to be trained on Cadam (2D) and CATIA (3D), except it wasn’t’ called version 4 then because that was all there was.

I worked for Volvo in Sweden and realized that I had to break into another CAD package if I was going to get on, so in the early 80’s at 25 years old I went down to Ford in Australia to learn PDGS. We were told by the agent that they wanted people with CATIA so they could re-train them but when we got down there they had been slightly economical with the truth and Ford had no intention of teaching us PDGS. I was put on manual, which suited me fine.

I went back to the UK and got trained on PDGS to help do the Lincoln town car in mid 80’s. With PDGS under my belt I had broken into Ford and from UK I went to Germany, USA and Japan.

After a second job in Germany on PDGS I found a job with Nissan in which they trained me on their own system CAD2 and was sent to Spain. While I was in Spain the world moved on, there was always Unigraphics and a smattering of Alias around but in the 90’s there was an explosion, or so it seemed of CAD packages .

CATIA V4, PDGS & CAD2 where just tools to use, you could apply principles of manual drafting to them but then came solid modeling. Bought by Managers, who didn’t have to work the systems or know how to work them but were bamboozled by very cool rotating graphics. I remember having a discussion with an IDEAS trainer who told me it would take 2 years to get proficient at the system and I said that was a retrograde step taking 2 years to learn how to use what was basically a tool because by the time people got proficient then the job they were working on would be over and the OEM would be onto a different system! It seems that know every OEM has it’s own propriety system.

I feel that the original systems although great for body, trim and tool draughting weren’t so good for engine design or packaging and were originally, in their green line form, quite graphically light where as solid modeling is very graphics heavy and look a lot better to show people who don’t know, necessarily, what they are looking at.

I now work for Nissan in the UK where the title engineer is just a pay grade and I have to attend at least 3 meetings a day, it seems that the bean counters have won the day all decisions come from Japan, the majority our CAD engineers a bussed in every day and come from Nissan India and are obviously cheaper than employing a local.

As a 26 year old these kinds of comments are precisely those that are of incredible value to me. I don't know whether to be fatalistic about this trend of events or merely realistic. But what I do know is that I will never ever again believe people (mostly the companies marketing themselves) who paint a picture which is all too picture-perfect. Because while it seems logical that a company would be run efficiently and everything is sunshine and rainbows however reality is too complex to have that be the reality all of the time, the only question is how often is it a reality: most of the time, some of the time or almost never. That's the question I don't yet know the answer to.

You have not asked me how to build a vehicle. That's your mistake. I am the consumer. Will somebody get to the American auto industry and tell them to make these changes . . . just three items. I have several, but complexity spawns disinterest. Change that single 180° bottom spoke in the steering wheel to a four-spoke steering wheel affording at least a four-finger-wide comfortable opening at the bottom; design the steering wheel to tilt near the back of the steering wheel (not way under the dash with that lever requiring two hands to operate); and give me AND my wife a fully functional power seat without having to purchase some juvenile-related luxury package. Give us what we want. We will buy.