Our engineering staff consisted of several Project Engineers, and a few Electrical Engineers. These electrical types would also be responsible for any software that needed to be done. Sometimes we had to hire outside help for the software part of the job, depending on its complexity. The Project Engineers were mainly mechanical type people, and usually had no real experience in circuitry design (although most understood the basics).

The first step in any project was to have a sit-down meeting with all the participants including the Project Engineer assigned to the job, the sales people, electrical engineering, and our CEO, Craig Barrett. Copies of the quote were compared with the customer purchase order, to make sure nothing was missing. At this point the assigned Project Engineer was given his customer contact information so he could introduce himself; usually an email would suffice, although on larger projects, there may be some travel requirements to meet face-to-face. To keep the customer informed, we usually would send pictures once a month to show progress. Most of the time this would satisfy the requirements, although they may also visit our plant from time to time.

Our automotive customers usually had very specific standards that we had to base our quote on; these might include brands of electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic or lubrication items we had to use. Sometimes, the same customer had different standards depending on where their particular factory was located (I.E. a Ford specification for Dearborn may be different than one for a Ford plant in Los Angeles). Usually these items were covered under “additional charges” on our quote, but sometimes they turned out to be surprises to us. To explain: we usually had only one person quoting a job, and many quotes for them to go thru. So it was virtually impossible to review some of these “Customer Specifications” in any great detail (some of these specs were many pages long, and covered all sorts of items). Things were missed in the initial quote, and when we received the purchase order, one of the first things the Project Engineer would do was to review the Customer Specifications again. Quite often he would uncover a few questionable items; we would discuss these internally, and our salesperson might go back to the customer to try and get some additional money. Sometimes this would work; sometimes the customer might waive the particular item on this project; but most of the time, because the purchase order was already issued, and we had accepted it, we were held accountable to supply it.

When the machinery was delivered to us, our shop floor people would unload it and place it on the floor. The project engineer would usually have some time to look it over before the disassembly process was started. Hopefully, by this time we would know the scope of the project, so any of the components that would not be reused could be put to one side (if the customer wanted them back), or discarded (if they did not).