Speck Products is seeking a highly motivated product designer to aid in the rapid growth of our iPod mp3 player, Sirius/XM satellite radio, and TREO/Motorola cellular accessory product line. The perfect candidate has a minimum of 3 years experience in a fast paced consumer product environment such as the toy or consumer electronic market. This team player should have experience bringing designs from conception to manufacture. CAD skills are essential (both SolidWorks and ProEngineer), and he/she must be highly skilled at surfacing. In addition to a strong engineering background the ideal product designer should have an industrial design sensitivity that can help support ID direction. Speed is critical and the ideal candidate should be able to work very quickly while maintaining the appropriate level of detail that consumers have come to expect of our products. Project management experience is a plus as growth into higher level positions is strongly encouraged. Some travel may be required. Ability to speak Mandarin Chinese or Cantonese a plus. A fun, collaborative attitude is a necessity. Speck Products designs, manufactures, and sells products that accessorize the consumer electronic enthusiast. We currently have 60 SKUs for sale that accessorize products ranging from the Apple Video and Nano iPods, to the TREO 700 and Motorola RAZR phones. Please refer to our website for our current product line up at www.speckproducts.com. We are a fast paced, innovative, and fun group that prioritizes time to market and an appropriate level of quality. Samples of your work are required. A B.S. in product design or mechanical engineering with emphasis in industrial design, and a minimum of 3 years of relevant work experience is required. Qualified candidates should send their resume to . Compensation: $60-85K depending of experience
You can't realistically expect a decent designer to show up in Palo Alto for less than $50/hr. Don't believe me? http://rschwarz.tripod.com/resume.html Went back to the Midwest. Make half as much, live twice as well.
tsk, tsk...its beat up on ID people time again... have you guys looked at the back end of a bus lately and marvelled at the texture and shut lines? ID people - the artistes of the tech world - are quietly saving us from skilled engineers and we should all be grateful ;o)
I'm love working with creative ID guys. Once one establishes a decent relationship, the work can be satisfying and rewarding. There's very good money to be made in getting ID people as close as possible to their vision (much better than $85K/year, especially in Palo Alto).
"Does this chime with other people ?" No. "you think its bad working with ID people - try working with Architects..." BoNotes: try working with some homeowners who go through architects, designers and contractors like fast food. Seriously, in manufacturing today in a competitive, litigious, and often regulated environment, you would be nuts to let go of your design, and absolute control, and put it in the hands of someone who will never be taken down by a lawsuit or government regulation. Without draft specs in my models, nothing would fit on mating parts. When I specify an ISO 22mm or 15mm anaesthesia taper fitting, that thing damn well better be exactly how it must be to make the spec., as I have to be able to reproduce tooling with identical results later as needed. When I make snap fit and taper fit assemblies, almost ever surface has draft. Without it, there wouldn't be a controllable reproduceable part, and no way to satisfy the FDA on Design Control. Liability & Regulatory control in lots of places mean you darned well better control your product, or you put your head on the block. The first time you recall a product, and replace it and the bill goes to say 3-5 million U.S.D., you will NEVER let someone else design/spec your parts. Of course, you may never get professional or product liability insurance at a rate you can afford either. Bo
Unfortunately, yes. I hate to work that way. The Chinese are not responsible for how the thing goes together with other parts unless you farm the whole thing out to them. I've worked on projects like this, and have always been uneasy sending my stuff out into this black box. I usually want a proposal back from them to show how they intend to do things, which gives variable results. I've seen companies take that mentality one step further, and just send a competitors product over to China and say "make something like this", forgoing all design functions altogether. The next outsourced job might be mine or yours. Every chance I get where it makes sense I try to get people to use local molders. There is something about being able to go down to the shop and seeing what is going on. Based on what I've seen, picking the cheapest Chinese source is a bad bet. If you have to go Chinese, then pick one you can communicate with and who delivers a quality product.
Mold cost is only a SMALL PART of the overall cost of bringing a new product to market. YET...if you screw up the design &/or tooling, you may cause more assembly, reject, and quality costs over the next year than you would have paid out if you got a Class A tool from a U.S. local vendor. I could scream at people who claim to be rational and then DO NOT look at the total costs, and that means ALL COSTS in a new product project. Sheesh. Everytime I hear some manager (& one we just removed) yell "Use Chinese tools", I cringe. One guy ordered a quick sample tool from "China" without telling anyone else because it was real inexpensive, shall we say. They actually put the new cavities in an old mold base and it had to have been 10 years old and well used. It wasn't set up with the right locating bushing or ejector connections, and the stripper plate action was farm machinery style. It was a total disaster and when the part was snapped together they got the sizes wrong and the parts split. Critical sizes were out to lunch. Total frigging disaster. On the other hand, I have a friend who is a chief engr. of a sportings good manufacturer based in Hong Kong, and he uses toolmakers and molders in China, but they get interviewed and the controls are tight, and they get the parts they need. He stated you can get class A tools in China. There are probably only 1% of Chinese toolmakers who can do class A quality which will keep major multinational vendors like Baxter or Bayer happy. Their Chinese tools may be 40-50% the price in the EU or US, you have to support that long distance activity in extra time and effort and that has costs. Time for Lunch - Bo
Bo - I think you state a very good case and I try and operate as close to a fully defined design as possible - but it really is 'horses for courses' and I am afraid I think that for alot of industries there is a commercial imperative to reduce the expensive design content in the West with greater design content offshore and this includes the prodictionising of SW parts - I am more and more just being asked to send the raw SW part files without detailed design work being done on them such as draft, simple moulding flow optimization etc and letting the client get this done offshore. I would agree with you - but then again this is how alot of 'stuff' is made. I think you equate the requirements of your industry to the requirements of the majority of stuff that is created and it is not as highly regulated as you might think. True but still this is how designs are sent offshore for tidying up and productionising. Whos taking about recalls only - companies have gone bust doing this sort of thing , but still it goes on and I can smile as I got paid before the final curtain for this particular client. TTFN Jonathan
So I'm not alone You make the crucial point - they have to get the contract for the whole job so that they are responsible for delivering a working product - if not, its just impossible to get the bits to go together ;-) even if the draft is specified LOL - Things land on my desk all the time with a note to design something like this. I just console my conscience with the thought that there are no new ideas anyway. However I always try and make it better because every design is a sequence of comprimises particular to that project - so I just try to figure out where they are in the competitors product and eliminate them from the competitors work. I must say German products tend to be the most difficult to crack - they tend, in my opinion to be a really good balance of production efficiency and innovative design. But thats just me . I'm afraid you're probably correct. Could not agree more. Funnily enough I have recently found that when I needed to use a good quality Chinese supplier recently, their prices were matched within 10% by Eastern European EU contries and they were far easier to deal with, which easily made up for the 10% difference ...and the communication for me is in the same timezone. I detect a a breeze blowing into places like Estonia, Latvia Poland etc TTFN Jonathan
This is a crock: "Whatever the cause, though, deskilling seems a key feature of the market/capitalist economy." Remember the defining quote that describes a communist economy: "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us." Doesn't look like deskilling is confined to the capitalists. Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"
Yeah, and then there's the type that says because everything's expensive, none of the costs matter, just bend over and take it. You still have to manage every link in the chain. Everything's a compromise between a product that won't sell because it's imperfect and a product that won't sell because no one can afford it.
Matt you & I agree: "Everything's a compromise between a product that won't sell because it's imperfect and a product that won't sell because no one can afford it." Unfortunately, some "executives" shoot from the hip rather than from a spreadsheet of the total time (people) and costs, shall we say. In my arena in disposable medical breathing products, the tools are not large or complex. I've never designed a part that would take a $200,000 mold to make a part. Nothing has been over $100k. I've seen attempts to save $s on a low cost supplier wind up costing far more than a Class A tool from the finest shop in the area, simply because of literal stupidity. When you need to work in the quality arena for medical products today, you can't get away "cheap" without paying a price somewhere else in expenses peripheral to the tool price. Delay in time to market is the worst possible price of all, as that one can be a silent killer. Bo
Ironically I'm currently sub-contracting to a New Zealand Company that is doing the R & D for a Chinese Company. The product is being designed in NZ the first 2 prototypes will be built here, then the production will go to China. I think the reasoning behind designing and making the first 2 here in NZ is that they will get a high quaility product that they can use as the standard to measure the quality of the products being manufactured in China. There are no injection moulded parts at this stage of development, hopefully we will also get to design the next iteration. NZ dollars are going back to be the South Pacific Pesso (the NZ $ has been quite high against the Greenback for the last few years) so we are becoming a cheap international outsourcing resource once again. John Layne www.solidengineering.co.nz
Forgot to add, if that Palo Alto Company would would contract me at $85,000 US per year and I could still work from NZ and Travel once Month to the US for a day or 2, I'd be one happy little designer. Cost of living is somewhat cheaper here. John Layne www.solidengineering.co.nz
John, we've talked a bit before, and indeed I've had European Tooling in Auckland do a couple small molds for me. I see a definite possiblity that in the future with the right web site & directed promotion of the abilities of a good designer, that he can start to build up an international client base, one client at a time. Terrific design is needed by a very large number of companies...judging by some of the cruddy stuff I see in the marketplace. I myself may contract out the "finish work" on my designs with a tool shop who has a good designer-design team to offload some of my work. Indeed I may soon want to "contact Auckland" again. Getting the word out efficiently and inexpensively is the game, and I see your web site is starting the process. Bo
