Wait a flippin minute, Cecil!!

Cecil Moore wrote:

SNIP


There's a dirty little engineering secret in there, Dave. If you don't
give the engineer a budget and a deadline, he will keep on improving his
design
forever. It's the operations (profit) arm of a company that forces the
engineer
to give up and say it's close enough.

SNIP

I served as Chief Engineer on a major component of the USAF MX Missile
{AKA Peacekeeper S-118] and I'm proud to claim that successful
engineering includes meeting all requirements of the following equally
weighted factors:

1) Meet ALL specifications.
2) Meet them on time.
3) Meet them below budget.

In six years I never requested a waiver to specification, delivered all
assets to the USAF typically 30 to 60 days ahead of schedule and
completed all engineering tasks at 96% to 97% of authorized budget.

Now, to give Cecil his due, the VP of Operations was intensely involved
because the contract incentives, increased profit, was based on ALL
THREE of these criteria.

Moral: Engineering includes technical, schedule and profit performance.
Science advances the knowledge in technical fields while the cost and
schedule issues are subordinate to the profit motive.

Deacon Dave, W1MCE