Photo Credit: jurveston

Part of my job involves providing engineering support for the people on the production floor. What makes my job distinct is that the product we’re building is a prototype. It demands a lot of time and attention, because nearly everything that we do is brand new to the team. It’s a lot of work, but it’s very exciting, and I’ve learned some very valuable lessons through the experience.

Here are three of the most important lessons learned through my experience on the shop floor:

Engineers Should Document Everything

You’ve got to be really pretty anal retentive about this. You’ve got to assume that nobody else will be able to remember the conversations you have or the decisions you make with them. It’s brutal, but it’s often true. Taking careful notes has two major benefits:

1. you know what’s going on because you have record of where you’ve been; and,
2. you look like an absolute saint.

I don’t know how many times it’s saved my hide because I took good notes during a meeting, or about why I made the decision I did on a certain issue. I capture everything I do at work on Evernote. I can’t recommend this tool highly enough. Check it out.

Keep Your Workspace Clean

Just like you can’t do a job without the right tools, you can’t do a job if you have no room to properly use your tools. The same thing goes for your desk, cubicle, inbox, or desktop. Engineers are knowledge workers. If you can’t easily find and use the information that’s pertinent to the work you do, you’re pooched. You simply can’t effectively do your job. In the manufacturing world, that means the widget doesn’t get built. In the engineer’s world, it means you can’t pump out the drawing/ report/ spec sheet/ design effectively or efficiently.

For those in serious need of help in this regard, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Getting Things Done. It’s changed the way I work in an amazing way.

Close Your Loops, Mister!

You’ve got to be really on top of closing all your “open loops”. For example, if you ask someone for some information, you need to follow up with them until you get what they promised you. Even though it’s not your fault that you don’t have what you need to do your job, if you’re not pushing, your boss won’t be pleased. At the end of the day, you’ve got to do everything you can to get your work done.

This becomes even more critical when you take into account how many loops a given engineer might have. Engineers fight information overload on a daily basis, and sometimes we lose that fight. When you lose sight of any of those open loops, then it really is your fault that you didn’t get something done.

Again, I highly recommend you use something like Evernote, or Remember the Milk to keep track of this kind of stuff.

What Say You?

What tips do you have to offer? Tell us in the comments section below!