Speaker 3: Hey, thanks for letting me guy.

Speaker 1: We can make this happen Pat and I work together at Roush for a couple years. So I kind of bringing some different perspective. We probably should just go right ahead and bring everyone up to speed on who you are and what you're doing and how you got to where you are. So if you don't mind giving us your kind of origin story with a

Speaker 3: Sure. Yeah roping Cleveland went ice cold air from there. I went out for a while and after that it's important if you're balding and burned morning out there and now I have finally in route and Oregon spray there.

Speaker 1: Nice. Okay. So then I guess that's so let's I guess walk it back. So how do we how do we get to Purdue? I guess it I mean you're looking at a few schools have finalized and Purdue.

Speaker 3: Yep. So I knew I wanted to be an engineer always and mechanically inclined. My family was not mechanically inclined. What do I need to turn anything in the house even at a young age and you know that I acquired. You know if you going to get a job in California in and out for you as an in-school go to get a job in Florida school. I want to do in California and my uncle so he was calling me probably weekly ad.

Speaker 1: How come you are always seems like there's some kind of connection to the school that people go to whether it's a family member that went there or or something. So you did your uncle who had

Speaker 3: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It definitely helped me out

Speaker 1: there. Okay, so you did you special like ice help tell me about how you picked your classes and stuff at Purdue. Did you specialize in something or did you did you have a specialty type program or did you end up just taking more like General

Speaker 3: classes? I had no idea when I really wanted to going for you. So I picked mechanical engineering because it is most Rural and and then I ended up in the Knology Oculus. Do you know linear algebra? And it kind of takes a little bit more on the other things and how things are made. We can print back that like I know you care and and getting it made no flocking to the designers here and it one way but you have manufactured in what way a lot of what I do right now.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I know definitely until I think you're the first person on the show who is who is had technology degree is listening to an unfamiliar in college. I think I'm pretty sure a lot of them to at least the ones that I know have essentially a technology track within the engineering program. So there's like mechanical engineer mechanical engineering within is also mechanical engineering technology electrical engineering electrical engineering technology. And so they're almost like two different tracks. You can take some universities don't necessarily call on different tracks or whatever, but they do highlight last technical Math and Science on 2nd August have four more Hands-On type of experience. I give you a person who is more Hands-On doesn't necessarily love the math. Begin their hands dirty and that everything went to technology road is a very valid valid option. So, how did how did you pet get to the point where you knew you wanted to do the technology route. Did you do that from the start or did you decide that later?

Speaker 3: No, I started a mechanical engineering. And after that I'll do it from here. Let me see and do in this area

Speaker 1: code over the

Speaker 3: side and I could not have been happier like you were talking about we had to do was manufactured without asking welding Inc, you know working on a lathe understand how they work. You don't eat the seeds of a boring rate pressure turn office stuff like that when you know you go out and talk to someone on the line. you know you can make this because You can go back to then. Here it is. You don't whatever it is. So I that was kind of the reason I went for a Miki and pretty happy with it. That's for sure. I got the awesome though that you started like hitting into a roadblock there with math and didn't give up. I know lots of people who when they ran into class of the didn't like or things they struggle with their like I'm just I'm just giving up either like I'm dropping out of college or I'm moving on to something else. It's all like sticking with that I think is important thing noticed that just cuz that's not working out to get a lot of people especially when I'm younger go like I can't be an engineer because I'm not good at math either this or that like there are routes to get into this that you don't have to be like, I just say what you are doing now, which will get it to like

Speaker 1: there's no different. There's no difference between the degree where you at today. I'm not going to mass I can't be an engineer but I bet that struggle with that idea because they they know they want to do engineering type work, you know, I don't I mean so I think ya looking at the technology around this is a serious one to consider and I think it has a has a lot of really good benefits really for the vast majority of jobs. Like it really doesn't I mean unless you're doing more researches have job what you wouldn't want to do. Anyways, if that was your personality. So so close to graduation at Purdue looking I got to get this the first job. So walking walking through the process of how you got to Wabash

Speaker 3: and it was Pitch Black, and it spread your resume out as many people as you can and you know, whether through design engineer has been pretty cool. I went in and interviewed and luckily I got it and you know. that's I got it, Okay,

Speaker 1: so you are kind of looking for any type of job. I guess my question is more like, you know, like what search terms you were looking for. Were you just looking for anything that has job in the name? Like I mean, I guess we're we're we're looking at specific area that you're interested in. So my thinking

Speaker 3: was first and then go from there any more experience you know it in the workforce for making money out on my own and then you know, I figure out what I can do from their work out. And I want a career when you said you were custom design engineer there a lot. Like you said like that sounds like an awesome title. Like it's a

Speaker 1: cool title. But what does that mean? What does that mean for that job?

Speaker 3: So we did a little bit of Designing to call McGraw-Hill Companies that needed Killers trailer in a vault 8.8. Words and music to I feel ever it is foggy with the whole wheel combination. He's inside of then we would expect okay, so I can use and the department order all the nuts bolts and everything was on that order a fairly important in the scheme of things because obviously that up. I made a lot of cases actually where they wanted slavery was back. Then you have to redesign the whole side of all the types of angles. Maybe they do, you know, they're supposed to ribbit ribbit ribbit to go find Blue River and I'm talking about you. That's a crazy times for the new side panels for the LA out or the combination whatever it is. You know when it ran we had to be on site make sure we were there black lionhead rabbit are long rivet we can all that. I'm okay. This is the right move it like that

Speaker 1: engineering job. Like I mean, it's one thing that I'm still getting used to today. But like as an engineer, you're forced to make technical decisions that at some point likely you will get called out on if you're wrong like it's not messed up. There are some engineering jobs for that's not sure where you just get to do stuff and then someone else gets a new problems, but it's pretty, especially more Hands-On jobs where it's like, okay. I need to make a bunch of decisions. Can you go any make 20 decisions? I need these rivets. I need these things. Can you do in a quick right? You got stuff going on. You got two different projects going on purchasing day after you because the project before it will cost too much. Do you want to make it cost less this time? And you're also just trying to be nice to your neighbors all kinds of things going on in my life. Right? We are still trying to do that you're so trying to do it and then two months later production says, hey that job remember when it was super busy and you had a bunch of stuff going on you made a decision. Will you forgot this small part you ordered the wrong size rivets? What are we going to do now? Like in then it's these engineering moments that come out like these are the engineering moments like where it's not it's not it is helpful when you're designing stop. These are pure engineering moment when you have problems and it's like, okay the problem is right. Now, this is a technical problem. You understand the domain. What's the path forward that's where the engineer comes into play because they have to take him to take into consideration all the technical objectives of whatever you're trying to do. And also what the problem is and then make the decision that's going to get us to the best possible. We talked about episodes before we're engineering is all up. It's not about getting to 100% It's about what's the best way to get to the high? Possible percent just like in the rivacase were picked the wrong rivets. It's like well, we we have these rivets in this one will be structurally sound enough. It'll feel good enough. It may not look as good and that's what I'm going to go with and so it sounds like you were doing a lot of those types of things almost engineering firefighting and if some people caught that too but like like that type of work where it's like, okay, here's the problem. How are we moving forward it without that pretty common in that

Speaker 3: job? We did our very best lemon test

Speaker 1: but it happens right but that's but that's why they have Engineers on staff

Speaker 3: yet. There's nothing right now because you you know it fix a running around loose. No, maybe they're the wrong feet of blue or whatever. Maybe maybe wrong. Dilaudid pain killer and we did a pretty good job. What happened? And there is a lot of firefighting and Call me cuz I was near to have the other more experienced engineer is there to say how I did this before you just need to do this or whatever it is. You know what a team work to get through those

Speaker 1: moment. Gotcha. So that that custom design engineer was that title now that you are through it. Is that still an appropriate title? I mean, it sounds like the generic mechanical engineer title. I would think people were just like let's say someone else was listening in the interested in that that type of a general idea of a job. I guess what title would you search in job

Speaker 3: search? That's a question like outside at Ariel's engineer because that was our job is to create the bill of materials and make sure that that building materials was correct that got you and all the other stuff was because of that or came to that.

Speaker 1: Sure, but yeah, it's almost like that was the primary responsibility was writing materials and everything else just was a function of the decisions made for that. So do you

Speaker 3: got that off and I didn't really ever make a bill of materials in undergrad if you could maybe there wasn't some projects built like a thing there of of inspecting and costing and doing all those things like was it was a part of my education. So obviously you're not always prepared for everything you're going into what was it like learning on the job there? Call my technology degree actually prepared me pretty good for that because we did do a little bit of that. You know, we were you know, introduced the bill of materials and how they were part numbers and stuff part numbers and things like that and also my internship, you know, having a little bit of experience with that helped out as well. But I think the biggest thing I learned there was basically how to work everyday in an engineering environment. So your internship at least my internship couple months long, you know the projects they assigned me as an intern weren't that important, you know, I still had presentations to do and you know little project here and there but you know, no one was yelling at me when I did something wrong

Speaker 1: to your interns are only really so responsible. Right? I mean that's never gets down to is like how responsible are you cuz I mean, is that or how high are you going to stick your head up like today? That's where you know the highest pick it up. Going to get dropped off like but there are perks to taking your head up high. I get paid more if that's what you care or it's how you grow and get to do more things and get more responsibility. So it's definitely it's definitely a balance and I would say that we know for my when I when I used to work, I guess I'll say that I didn't you just read it was every day was deciding how much am I going to stick my head out today? Okay. I got this email. How am I going to respond? Am I going to respond away the stick my head out a little bit more cuz I think it's the better thing to do or am I just going to sit here and let other people respond and if that's that's what you learn like, I'm going to try to patch a I guess I'm trying to say is like these are these are what you learn as an engineer. It's like being actually executing being an engineer. It's you know, you're comfortable with taking your head out. It's all these other things that you just going to school but still play into the engineer. You become right? Absolutely.

Speaker 3: So you you did not stay at Wabash for myself until now you went to another job. What was what was the deciding? Actor in the process like for moving on something else deciding factor was personal one for sure. I like the people there the job was pretty good there. But my wife at the time well, she wasn't my wife. She is my fiance at the time was living in Richmond Virginia. And so we are doing the long-distance thing and we've been doing it for about 2 years at that point and she said, hey, let's try to live closer to each other now that you know, we both have jobs. So he said, okay and we picked out a few different spots that maybe both of us could find jobs and the spot that worked out. The best was, Charlotte, North Carolina. Play move down to South Carolina there and I work for Smith's medical flexible Technologies. And we made CPAP hoses for people with sleep apnea connected to the mask that they wear at night to the positive pressure machine. And I my title there was R&D engineer which didn't quite describe what I was doing down there. We we had a few different CPAP hoses we have to make and I was in charge of about three of them and they were some of the higher volume Parts in our facility and the highest one of their Marquee products. So the plant manager was always inspecting our lines and making sure that we're doing things correctly in the engineering manager as well everyday. I spend most of my day out there

Speaker 1: in this did you know that I'm sorry. Like I'm just trying to like I need in the job title. Did it likely do that? Or I did when did you find out the first day that you were going to end curious as a Can you find out what you actually we're going to do

Speaker 3: I found out probably in the phone interview on the way. I got this job was that I had my resume on one of the job boards and the HR manager found my resume on the job board inside ho he has Extrusion molding experience from his internship. Let's see if he's interested in this job. So he actually called me and said hey, you know, the title is R&D engineer, but you'll be kind of in charge of couple different programs. There's not a whole lot of development, you know, if you want to talk about so me being me I'm not going to say no to anything as far as interviews or learning about different jobs. So I said yeah and they actually sent the engineering manager up to me and Indiana. We talked about it there and had an interview in Indiana versus having to go down to South Carolina. I've never heard of that but

Speaker 1: go to be interviewed they came to you. I mean you can see that the alley but like

Speaker 3: I mean, I think he was on his way somewhere like Chicago or something. It was a pretty cool down there and then I'll might learn a lot more about the job there. And then finally, I went down and visited and met a few of the other engineers and got to see the place before I actually read the to work there.

Speaker 1: So one thing you said that I really really like in terms of your it's almost like an approach to networking is like always leave doors open and I really think that's such a great approach to networking is like if someone wants to have a coffee if someone wants it like talk or like like make yourself available for that cuz I mean one of the big things about the show is just life is random how you can help people get their jobs is random and if if that is How it happens the more doors you open the more exposure you're going to get from that Randomness. Like I mean, that's really kind of how I how I always thought about it is like life is so random and it's all about it going to be about who you know and stuff. So just trying to meet as many people as you can try to get exposure and talk to as many people can officially managers and stuff them or FaceTime. You can get in front of managers to learn about them and get inside from them even also so they can just learn your face like all that stuff is really really great. So I so I just you point out there and I just wanted to emphasize it cuz I totally totally agree like leave has many doors open as possible like most people say often times. I don't burn Bridges and that's true. But I like what the other likely has many doors over there

Speaker 3: a possible. Yeah, that's exactly what I've always tried to do my only because I don't have a specific passion about a certain aspect of engineering so, you know, I'm not sure what all like next. You know, I like what I do now, but maybe there's something better or down the road. I don't know. And I you know, just get yourself out there like you were saying, you know, I just put my resume on one of these jobs online job boards and a random. HR manager called me out of the blue. So you never know who's going to be on the other end of the phone, you know when you get those strange phone calls or strange strange phone number phone calls. Your job was more on the line, I guess in the title my dick taste and when I think about people working on likes, I haven't done it this but not a part of my engineering Journey doll so far. Were you getting like called in a lot in your off work hours was that hey, something's wrong. We need you in here to come fix this when you know, you already gone home or it's the weekend or something. I think it's kind of an image that comes into my mind and about comfortable chair Manufacturing cuz every every minute that line is down no matter where you are. The company will always, you know, Santa's losing money.

Speaker 1: It was a

Speaker 3: possibility but thankfully our maintenance department was really good and laughed a lot closer the facility that I did. I had an hour drive. I think it was 40 miles each way. So by the time they called me and let's say they to wake me up and get me in there and you know, they have to wait another hour or where they can call the maintenance manager that's been there 25 years. To get the machine fixed or whatever I did. I probably got a few phone calls throughout my time there, but I was able to talk to them over the phone vs. That's have to drive in 2 hours and I was not looking forward to that at all

Speaker 1: things good or bad that you that you liked or didn't like about the manufacturing type job like for a for those thinking that I might like a manufacturing job. I guess what what what advice would you give them or what would you tell them about being

Speaker 3: that they definitely have relationships with the line markers? Yeah, because those are the people that are going to give you the feedback about the line if you implement something new. Those are the people that are going to have to do it. So you have to you know, figure out how to motivate them. Even though you're not their supervisor to do whatever project whether it's a test run on a new product or you know, you're trying to do a scrap study and they have to know write down every piece of scrap that they have or weigh it or whatever they need to do. So that was definitely something that I learned down there now just how to interact with different types of people

Speaker 1: because it's totally different one time. I made this like this been sorting system in always comes like this, right the engineering manager says, hey, we want to improve the process of to think about how to improve the process and you put the engineering hat on Person of the new Young engineering hat. Around okay. I'll move this been over here. It's a little bit closer to print the operator will move slightly last multiply that times a million and Boomer saving money. Let's go. You think like that's the end but it's so far from the end of how that actually has to get in 4 minutes cuz I like that and I ended up older lady. I didn't have any repertoire with her like what you're talking about and she just lit me up like she just it was not her system. I in I couldn't communicate because I was trying we're speaking different languages like she was telling me she didn't like it and I kept being like what's technically wrong with it. It's technically better. She didn't care if they are at all, but they can see right she comes in 40 hours a week doing the exact same thing or

Speaker 3: something.

Speaker 1: Are brush your teeth with your left hand cuz it's technically better do it. However, they internalized at like you have to approach those hard situations and it helps so much to have some kind of rapport with him some kind of interaction some kind of relationship in communication

Speaker 3: and donuts

Speaker 1: and bring some donuts before and a reason Donuts, you know after work on the manufacturing I was just in so Africa, totally forgot about that like interacting with the line people and how you do that effectively because they can they can totally make or break you I mean if you have everyone was responsible for your success not liking you for whatever reason but it just seems weird because in some ways like it seems manipulative. I mean,

Speaker 3: I'm trying to get them to do something. Don't necessarily want to do so, I guess in that way it is. I wouldn't call manipulating them but you're trying to change their behavior. And when you have that relationship with them, you know, if you talk to them, you know, it doesn't have to be much sometimes 20 minutes a week. Just saying. Hey, how's the kids are you know, they did you go fishing this weekend or how's my case. The Clemson football game, you know talk comes in football or South Carolina football. That was huge down there despite not having a horse in the race, you know, just talk about what they want to talk about get to know them a little bit and then, you know, two months down the line a month online. You can ask him. Hey, do you mind trying this and then maybe if that doesn't work then he bringing the donuts or whatever you need to maybe talk to the manager. But you know, which is easier when you get when you know, somebody y'all just like getting someone on a podcast. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Pause like hey Pat do this for me

Speaker 3: knowing that like, okay, maybe if I do a great job on that, it's going to look good for me. Maybe I could get a bonus or help me get the next time the company or something where the person that you're trying to like make changed their job. Like they are probably not going to have anywhere near the potential same outcome that you are there. Just like if I'm getting a process and so I think there's always always a tension between which one of the guards this duty but did the engineer vs. The shop floor above different sentence in what's happening and everything and I

Speaker 1: mean, but I understand other people's situations like yours like you're in the right now Brennan this idea of thinking through the life of the person that you are affecting like that that tool as an engineer isn't important one that the tool being you thinking through the effects of your decisions on other people because then that will help It's going to it's just going to make it easier cuz he I mean it's it's as they do unto others as you would want to do unto yourself, right? I mean if someone's going to have the ability to affect your day today, you would hope that the decision they would make they would think it so you want to send to give that same courtesy to other people and it sounds like it's just super critical in the manufacturer has some really okay. So what we believe in

Speaker 3: leaving in 2014 Okay.

Speaker 1: Yep, that's 2014. The job market is comeback things are okay in the job world and we're ready to make a change. I was supposed to talk to us. Why what's what's called Carolina.

Speaker 3: Once again, my wife and I were doing weekend trips to see each other every weekend wasn't too bad. But you know wasn't ideal we still weren't actually living together just like being married for a little over a year. So we said okay, let's try this again and her headquarters was here in Detroit. And I said all Detroit works if you know what the automotive industry. I'm sure I can find a job up there somewhere so luckily enough. My dad actually work in Detroit in the early nineties. So he was able to give me a list of companies that your engineering companies that I could apply to Andros was one of those companies and I applied to I don't cry four or five different jobs within route. And I also got a call from HR there and they said hey, you don't really fit for the job that you apply to but there's this other nvh job. You're really good fit for so said that's interesting side. No nvh experience. I took one semester there wasn't nbh class in college, which was lucky enough there, but I wasn't sure when I'll once again, I didn't want to close down any doors and I'll talk to the manager there and oddly enough. The the manager said. But there's a lot of lot of casting which is very similar to injection molding. So we think that some of your experience there can transfer over to the casting side of things and then we can find it bring you up to speed on the NBA side of things. Which I thought was interesting cuz I you know, what's it's a new skill I get to learn about nvh something. I knew very little though little about. And you know get to work with these castings, which I hadn't had a whole lot of experience only a brief introduction in college once again, so I accepted the job and became a product development engineer and I was in charge of 7 different casting programs coming out of Asia. So our suppliers are in Asia and we brought the castings in and then resold them to customers and our names went on those castings route. So we responsible for all the quality and everything there and, you know just started learning a lot really because with those programs I was responsible for talking to the sub suppliers the Machine Shop The Foundry And then also talking to our customers as well to make sure that they were happy with our products and you know any time there was a new opportunity for a casting program. You know how I was the one at the potential customer in a shaking hands and trying to talk through their needs and what we could do for them and just pretty much anything that has to do with those programs. I was responsible for I didn't necessarily do all of the work. Let's say there was a quality issue. I would work to Our rough quality Department to coordinate the efforts there cuz you know, they obviously know a lot more than about quality and testing in measuring than I do. So use those resources and just you know, my job is to make sure that got done make sure the customer is happy with all that don't know if you guys are familiar with like that 8D process in quality there. There's like eight steps to correcting a quality issue in an automotive environment there.

Speaker 2: So so

Speaker 1: it sounds like you had a lot of stuff going on. I mean, it sounds like I mean one thing to know I mean, I just know this but I'm in route to the smaller company. So you're into small groups to get a lot of hats and that's kind of an opportunity cuz it sounds like you were able to sell a lot of the steps of this process. I mean, I think product development engineer product engineer the pretty pretty standard title. They do a lot of different things on but maybe maybe if you can just let just picking example program or just make up a program. Can you like so there's the first customer interaction you're going to the customer to finding the specs? Okay. So you leave that meeting and you have their technical requirements kind of like just let me know 5 minutes or whatever you walk us through what that looks like for you following that products through through

Speaker 3: is generally the customer has an idea what they want. It's usually actually a full technical drawing and we will take a technical drawing and work with our suppliers. To make sure that that's actually a part that can be made through the different casting processes that they're capable of. And if it's not then we have to go back to the customer and say hey, can you change this Dimension? Maybe it's a little too tight for the casting process and or whatever it is and I go back and forth with the customer and The Squire until everyone's happy. We get paid from our suppliers and then create our quote with those beds. And then at that point our customers sometimes comes back to us and says hey the price is too high. So then we revert back to another round of okay. Can we alter alter the design to make is cheaper? So can we open up some specs that don't that are a little bit too tight and we take out the material can we package it differently in all sorts of things we can do to try to lower the price to meet our customers needs and then when that process is hopefully successful or we get there from the customer and start in on the tooling. Where was the tooling? What's the tooling Stone? Usually we go over to the supplier and see the first few parts be made. And then we usually bring back a couple with us to have them measured at Roush and they're also measured at The Foundry and at the machine shop and we try to line up the dimensions make sure everything you know, where am I going the same way that our suppliers are measuring it and then there is in the automotive industry what they call the ppap process which is a qualification process that it's a fact of material that we have to submit to our customers that says, you know, we can make this product has CPK numbers dimensional report material specifications and testing all sorts of stuff in there. And then once that's approved then we go into production and then kind of follows production make sure that everything's on schedule through production at the workload goes down quite a bit there and then once it starts going end-of-life then we have to Talk to her customers. Once again, make sure that we're not making too many parts. We don't have a whole lot of scrap or excess Parts lying around when a product program and everyone's happy

Speaker 1: with this

Speaker 3: kind of talked about and doing a lot of different things. What is it like trying to organize all that when you're when you're balancing a technical thing of how do we make the trade-offs we have to make do you know make it a competitive bid to going through all that

Speaker 1: process all the paperwork all

Speaker 3: the checking the boxes and everything is a big Nick's there between not just straight engineering but also the logistical side of getting it done is that it does that day is take a lot to learn

Speaker 1: understand or is it kind of something

Speaker 3: that as you're going through? It's all very natural.

Speaker 2: I

Speaker 3: think it's a little bit of both definitely is the ppap process takes a little bit to understand especially because I didn't come from a quality background but some of the other stuff I think naturally, you know talking to customers talking to suppliers. There was definitely learning process working internationally you're talking to people from different countries that communicate differently and you know that that always presented a challenge. But you know, it is a lot to keep track of it. So important to keep everything written down at least for me cuz there's no way I can remember remember all of the aspects of all of these programs and you know, you know when your boss or

Speaker 1: phases of that and you know when you sit down at your desk, like how do you figure out what you're doing next ride? How do you prioritize between that like, those are all things that you just got to kind of figure out like there's no there's no engineering class. That's how do you manage the priorities of seven different cast and prioritizing of stuff but it seems like it doesn't work like that like the priorities come when fire is right and you can't plan for everything and so Your best option is really just doing your best that you can to try and cover as many bases as you can but realizing that things are going to go wrong and still learning how to handle the situation where things go wrong. Like did you tell it like I mean if you feel like you have a process for that now like do you like when you get the email that says hey Pat, we got some parts in that are bad like yeah. I feel like everyone's initial thoughts and I'm sure there's probably some of yours, but now that you're more into it like it's got to be more like okay, you know, it would go like this is just a thing like you like that. I mean

Speaker 3: the part of me that always says, oh crap. Oh crap crap, but I think it helps because I think it was like within the first 2 weeks on the job that first email came through and said, hey, we have bad parts. And so I just kind of looked at me like I have no idea what to do. I've been here two weeks. So I was lucky enough to just talk to my manager and he's like, all right. These are the steps you need to do. So we walked through that first one and it was you know, basically from day one on how to do that and we walked in the stops and he kind of held my hand through it. And then the second one came not too long after that and you know, I tried it on my own obviously made a few mistakes here and there and I you know, every time we have one of these issues or a new program you learn something from the previous issues previous programs or previous issues. And you know, I just tried it. I actually have a log of those on my Microsoft OneNote of all the stuff I learned about different things and we have another one for entire department because these things you know, they come back, you know different casting issues like shopping three different programs. So by the third one you like. Okay. I know it's the sources. I know I know what to do that sort of thing, But a program manager, you know that started as a project engineer there and then became a program manager you're responsible for all these different parts. So you need to have all that information because any time anybody has a question the customer the supplier management, even the different Parks & Rauscher working with you know, they're coming to you. They're calling you or emailing you and you need to have that information. If it is the least at the tip of your fingers is not the beer song.

Speaker 1: I know I know I think that's great. That means the big thing there has to be a steamboat like continual learner and learning from failure to failure and I guess just how it is. Like if there were never any problems that would need to be Engineers. Like that's the fact of it like there's going to be going to be problems like supposed to happen if it's your best course is to figure out How to learn from your failure so that one you can acknowledge failure is coming and it doesn't hit you so hard that in the moment you can learn from it and then take that with you to the next thing cuz there's a lot of people that when they fail to shut down they like a mental what they want stop communicating and liked it there just very poor in the moment. You see that and one thing I see from good leaders is their ability to handle failure well and it sounds like your manager did that it's like hey, you know when you walked in he not like what are we going to do everything we can to not have it happened, but when it happens if your the steps let's walk through it. And in that moment, I'm sure like, you know, you feat you feel good about it. So that's what good leaders and people that he and I don't even do you mean just like former leaders like your boss but like good colleagues do is they help everyone calm down and end in Failure moment and learn from them so that you can you can move forward and so that's That's just something you want cuz it's hard. It sucks to fail really does suck to fail. It makes you feel like crap but it makes it feel more like crap. If you do it continue in your pizza

Speaker 3: cutter one thing that I learned a thing for my first job where all my failures will say, we're my fault, you know that they have fat fingers one of those building materials are I just put in the wrong part, you know, so there were yelling at me, you know, even though these are our parts at Roush, you know, it's not me fat Frank fingering the a mistake or whatever. Usually I mean I have made mistakes, but usually it's our supplier. So it's Turn on Feliz personal I guess that makes sense. The other thing there is just staying calm in the moment. My manager is really good at that and it just the whole team feeds off of is bide their

Speaker 1: you decided to

Speaker 3: get an MBA which is something that we seen a lot of a lot of engineers get that are coming to show at least what was the motivation for doing that and

Speaker 1: has paid off for you since you got it specially relative to like a masters in engineering like I guess what your thoughts on how you how you got to the NBA is a passport.

Speaker 3: I guess as far back as undergraduate. I knew that I didn't want to be a super technical sit at your desk. Make prints design things every single day. Don't talk to anybody kind of engineer. I knew I wanted to learn about engineering kind of use that knowledge to help the company in a bigger broader

Speaker 1: way. I think I make sense what you're saying. I mean, yeah, I mean the NBA is definitely more of a big big reaching. You know, what I mean master of Masters engineering is more individual may be your small team helps you more technically, but the NBA helps you think bigger help you think bigger about the company and bigger about the company's read. I think that makes a lot of sense as the tool that can help you step towards that direction

Speaker 3: and that's exactly what I was going for. There is you know, I knew I didn't want to be an engineer for the rest of my career. So I needed a little bit broader of an education. No, they don't teach you about finance a whole lot in engineering. So I need to learn a little bit more about that and some of that soccer skills that you know, most engineering schools don't have so I went out and got the NBA rather than the Masters in engineering.

Speaker 1: Why did you choose Michigan? I guess our how did you was it in-person classes? Was it weekend night classes? I guess what are there specific things about that program that tied you to it

Speaker 3: wanted to do a mix of both in person and online classes because you know, once again building that Network meeting people, I knew that you know, you talk to people you email people you might have a video chat online, but it's not the same as sitting next to the same person for 16 weeks and then actually getting to know them getting the Note 4 Pictures and things like that. I thought were was a something I needed to do in order to help my career even farther than the actual material learns out of the book. So that's why I fixed University of Michigan Dearborn. You know the cost was definitely a factor there to you know, the University of Michigan's right here Michigan State and I didn't want to go into any sort of dead or anyting

Speaker 1: for sure that it's just cost for them in there. So, I mean that makes ya as as at work when you have to make decisions about technical Achievement First cost like in it, we do it all in a person likes to

Speaker 3: so yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I got the NBA. I don't think I I just got it in December. So I

Speaker 1: don't like that

Speaker 3: my wife there. She's the one that allowed me to have the time to study and go to classes and do everything while she was dealing with her twin newborn girls.

Speaker 1: So he's a little busy just had a few things going on 112 newborn NBA. I'm working to you know, I'm just

Speaker 3: looking forward to using my MBA here. To help out Roush I got to do

Speaker 1: something without giving you a broader perspective MSA. You say you're interested in getting the ability to help a company that help a company brought in no more broader sense to feel like I gave you the tools to do that.

Speaker 3: I think it has just like an undergraduate degree, you know, it can teach you everything but it kind of gives you the base knowledge to go into whatever you want to do as far as management goes whether you know, it's Department managing and trying to deal with different personalities or deal with profit and loss statement or balance sheets for the department or if you want to do something completely different going to HR manager or something along those lines.

Speaker 1: Do you have any other questions? Yeah, one thing I do a little bit of time for here. Is it you're the first person has been on the show Pat that's had a lot of print experience and I think a lot of people think like mechanical engineer like they're working in Prince all the time and you're a person that out of all people have been on who is working heavily in Prince, like looking at pray for those listening like Prince can get incredibly detailed like it's not just about like here's the here's the square and it has dimensions of within a in length of this like it's like, okay well house. Where is it? Is it the square? What's the surface roughness? What like what are all these thing in a chest? I am not a person who is into that that I'd like for you to just talk about it that talk about your experience, but getting comfortable with friends in for those interested in maybe just advise that you have liked it. If just so people can hear what it's like for someone who works in the D in the Deep. Keep weeds of Prince every day

Speaker 3: just like you described it. It can get as deep as you want. As far as the weeds go. It's actually surprising how many people and Industry don't know how to read prince. It's almost kind of Reason differently sometimes so there's a system called gd&t which geometric tolerancing and dimensioning and I you know that there's specific symbols and atoms and all sorts of things and You know, they have to be interpreted. It's not like reading a book or just looking at the numbers. They sometimes they have to be added together. You know different symbols will affect other dimensions or multiple Dimensions. I've sat through many a discussion and had to bring in four and five different opinions on how to read a print and it is very very important because almost every contractor every PO says all parts must conform to the print which makes sense on a general level, but if you don't read it the same as your customer, then there is an issue

Speaker 1: there. Yeah, it seems like a huge like astrix on like this whole like a here's your $100,000 million-dollar quote astrix. Like it's got to be the same as the print. Well then like well, why is it so much stuff? I keep him. What's not on the print my given just like Granite surface roughness is like one thing I just like you like if the customer cares about it, but it's not on the printer like all the stuff. It just seems to be so frustrating. So maybe just my follow-up question. Thanks for going to bring any more details in the passage. How did you like? I mean I caught. What was your what was your learning experience like to get to

Speaker 3: get, that was another difference between mechanical engineering and mechanical engineering technology? Yes. We took two classes actually in print reading and one was print reading and then the other one was gd&t. So we started from the beginning just like they did, you know 19. Anytime before Cad and we actually had to draw Prince. They give us like a model essay is the coffee cup or something and we have to measure it and then dry in the specific format that they wanted and make sure all the dimensions were correct and then they grade it and make sure everything you know, what's right there. So that's where it started and then once you get into industry. You know, there's there's always something that you haven't learned and it's a lot to learn by experience. No, Rauch has a few gd&t expert so, you know, if I don't understand something completely I go to them and a lot of times our customers or even the designers making the drawings don't exactly know what they're doing or how the interactions work or they may know and they've just overlooked it because there's 500 dimensions on a Sprint and they forgot this Dimension 47 interacts with Dimension 236 So I know it's definitely a skill learned. And it's definitely very important at least in my job.

Speaker 1: Yeah,

Speaker 3: that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah,

Speaker 1: but let me send some of his other people, you know, like used experts around you the open to learning and figuring it out. And that's that's that's good advice. Well, alright, I think that brings us about the hour mark Pat. Thanks again for being on the show man. Really really really appreciate it. I think we should probably do our our final the follow-up question. We always do is you know, if you could talk to yourself back in undergrad and give yourself any advice. What would you tell yourself and stay the course or would you any any tidbits? You want to let yourself

Speaker 3: know? Besides who's going to win the World Series in the next 10 years. What I would tell myself is I think you're kind of what we talked about before is just make sure that all your doors are open don't say no to anything until you really understand what it is, which I would say is it's the very least through the interview process of a new job or talking to someone because you never know what you're going to like in undergrad. I wasn't really interested in MPH. But now that I'm in MPH, I think it's really interesting and you know how we can change the Acoustics and vibrations on a vehicle just by adding weight in this area or adding rubber to this or whatever it is and you know same with casting processes, you know much about that and I just keep learning. Definitely keep learning common theme, theme of herbalism everyone coming on today. Thanks for having me guys. Appreciate it. I really enjoyed listen to Pat story. He's in a lot of different things and done it crossed. I don't

Speaker 1: have a different range of a

Speaker 3: boy talks about there for me from his first job doing doing quotes and customers and having to make bill of materials to kind of being process manufacturing to then go through the whole process of production. I think I'll bring some interesting points that a lot of what he does. It's not necessarily technical but it has technical Parts in it that are very key. So it's the

Speaker 1: reason why it why it

Speaker 3: has to be someone with it with an engineering degree in there doing it because they're those key points, you know, maybe someone who's not an engineer can go through all the processes and Logistics and everything, but it's only a generic can look at a print and say okay we need to change this to cut costs and we can do this and having that experience doing that. This is really important. I told interesting think about how that all missions together and come to sticker picture of technical skills of people skills working with customers of Finance skills and bring him like, you know, you got the MVA to do things beyond that but I imagine that also helps daily were too and I think that's a really important aspect that we often overlooked in an education specialist engineering of now,

Speaker 1: here's a problem solve it but not everything

Speaker 3: else around it and a large part of your job may not be technical. But when you need to be technical it's very important you write

Speaker 1: that are required by law to be done by Engineers, but I may be only a small part of it that's actually technical. But yeah, like you said like it has to be done by an engineer. So but then yeah, you have a lot of engineering jobs that are let me know already technical but still having be done by then, then the folks becomes a lot of Yeah, so he's talking through the mechanical engineering technology to technology type degree in and how that really really worked out well for him and how he was so happy that you made the switch. I think that's awesome. I think that exist in that that is really a good option for for certain people, you know, if you don't if you know, you don't want to go down the technical path least, I think it's cool to hear a story and how he was able to leverage that he needs for his job now and I didn't didn't have anything like that until like his education prepared him better for his current jobs in my education would have and I think it's good to think about the technology degree as that, you know, if you have a sense of where you want to go like you can be the better engineering degree for you based on what you think you want to do.

Speaker 3: Yeah. I think I think about a lot of When I do in my job and looking at like other job postings at things it's not can you solve equation? Can you do researches? Can you do this specific thing which is which is everything sort of hands on some way and Engineering. I'm unless you're in a very deep technical research attack seal. I think I think when I was going to college, I kind of mixed feelings about the mechanical engineering technology stuff to want to be like, well, they're not doing it as in-depth as as you know, we read your engineers are which was really don't you think that way but also kind of being like maybe they are there like building stuff and doing things hands on it an experience. And yeah, it definitely not anything to be discounted as just as good as it's sometimes even better like dealing with that.

Speaker 1: Yeah, like I mean cuz you can flip that you would be the same thought as an undergrad of like they're not going in-depth enough into the question of are we going to in-depth like in my Cricut? I'm training me to be too technical when realistically the job I'm going to get isn't going to be isn't going to require me to be this Technical and I'd be better off taking these other type of classes. Like I didn't get too legit thought of the process that you The guy I understood as an undergrad either so

Speaker 3: definitely

Speaker 1: a conversation

Speaker 3: and looking forward to what's coming next

Speaker 1: until next time by Sia. Thanks for listening to this episode of engineer your career with Troy Bauman and Brennan tymrak. For more information about the show visit our website at EYC podcast.com

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