Front End Engineering Department

Hi everybody,

I am looking for input from the veterans out there, and published sources for answers and guidelines to the following questions. I work for a premium brand builder of outboard powered boats from 30' to 50' (200 units per year). My position is that of Engineer, Product Developer, Designer, Production support, etc., and I am the only person on staff for that work (I know how Custer felt).

I want to convince the leadership levels to expand the design and engineering office. For reasons that seem obvious to me this would potentially increase our efficeincy, productivity, reduce waste, etc..

What are the acceptable ratios' of design/engineering staff to production?
Is there comparative data (or any data) available to support my conviction that increased engineering capability would improve our bottom line, product quality, efficiency, etc.?
The veterans can probably imagine more questions and answers than I can articulate here.

Thanks in advance!

 

Speak to your sales and marketing guys and ask them for input on how the company can increase its profitability in the easiest way. (The right answer is same number of boats with higher margins, that means more specials etc. more design/engineering maybe?)

Approach this with care, as another answer could be "Outsourcing" then they don't need to keep a whole bunch of expensive software updated, and the guy in the corner costs alot of money to.

You need to make the value you bring to the company more visible maybe??

Good luck

Alan