The engineer's job is chiefly one of design, but even design, where a project has grown large enough, may be subjected to the traditional rules of the division of labor. An example of how this is done may be seen from the manner in which the A. O. Smith Company went about the engineering of its new automobile frame plant in the 1950s. The design work was broken down into segments, both of the design task to be done and of various technical specialties:
First we developed a rating chart for all the engineers available. Technical specialties, attitudes, type of work were included. For instance, some might be draftsmen, capable designers, or medium designers, etc. This rating was developed by the group leaders who best knew these people.
We even had a psychological evaluation of every man. . . .
Then we brought the engineers together and told them what our objective was. . . . We laid down certain rules of operation. We said that we would brook absolutely no interference with the rules but would follow them religiously. Anyone who did not so operate would have to move aside. We said that eight hours a day they were to follow the rules. We wanted all complaints to come to us formally and we would consider them and amend the rules, but we wanted no one to make changes or alter procedure from the operating pattern we had established.
We asked each of our group leaders to put on blinders and absolutely not to worry about the other fellow's job. That was engineering management's business to handle.
Admittedly, this procedure was adopted under the pressure of time, but many large engineering projects are handled in a similar way, to the point where many engineers are restricted to a design specialty or an engineering routine, while the conception to which they have been subordinated remains “engineering management's business." At the same time, so-called computer-aided design and computer-aided engineering encourage the translation of the traditional graphic language of the engineer into numerical form so that it may be handled by computers and numerical control instrumentation.‘º This opens the way for the transfer of part of the engineer’s function to electronic equipment. Much of the design process, which consists of the recall of standard information, from handbooks, files, etc., together with calculations based upon this information, can then be stored in computer records and the calculations done much more rapidly by the computer.
Some objects, like mechanical cams, can be designed by programmed computations, skipping the use of drawings either as input specifications or as directions for production. The present practice is chiefly to produce numerical tables and text printouts, but the increased use of numerical control of machine tools encourages a trend toward computer outputs of magnetic tapes which then operate production machinery directly.
Small electric motors are examples of much more complicated products which are designed today in a completely automatic way. For a given specification, the computer chooses standardized iron cores for stator and rotor design, as well as rotor axles and casings. It also makes some engineering computations for the wire dimensions and the windings. The input for such an automatic design procedure is simply a table form in which the desired performance data are filled in by an engineer. The computer output is a list of standard parts and data on the wire, the configuration of the windings, and the turns to be wound."
These methods are also being applied to stress analysis for the intricate patterns of flush rivets in aircraft, to bridge design, hospital planning, and other engineering problems. Apart from the labor-saving aspects of the technique, it alters the occupational composition in the same manner as does numerical control. Since such techniques are used in accord with the management-favored division of labor, they replace engineers and draftsmen with data-entry clerks and machine operators, and further intensify the concentration of conceptual and design knowledge. Thus the very process which brought into being a mass engineering profession is being applied to that profession itself when it has grown to a large size, is occupied with duties which may be routinized, and when the advance of solid-state electronic technology makes it feasible to do so.
Outside of the medical and dental fields, there were approximately a million technicians in employment in 1970. Of these, some 310,000 were draftsmen and another 90,000 were surveyors, air traffic controllers, and radio operators, leaving about 600,000 as the total of all others, including engineering and physical science technicians. There is no generally accepted definition of the term, but the distinguishing characteristic of the technician is that he or she functions as “support" for the engineer or scientist; the routine which can be passed to a lower-paid and slightly trained person goes to the technician.\* Most have no special training or education apart from what they learned on their jobs; but with the growth of attendance in higher educational institutions, employers are increasingly using graduates of two-year technical institutes and even holders of four-year degrees. Pay is not much above that received by craftsmen; for example, in early 1971 the average weekly pay of draftsmen was \$170, while the average weekly earnings of all craftsmen and foremen were \$167.13
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Labor and Monopoly Capital
Effects of Management and Technology
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\* It should be noted that there is a considerable discrepancy between European and American engineering practices insofar as the use of engineering technicians is concerned. “Overall British industry," says a recent study, “employs 4.7 technicians per professional as against the American ratio of 0.62 technicians per professional." The French and Germán ratios, while not so high as the British, are still very high compared to the American; in the neighborhood of 2.5 technicians per professional engineer. This means that this occupational classification, important in these European countries, is relatively small in the United States. It also means that whatever the importance given to the classification in Europe, that significance cannot be automatically transferred to the United States.12