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Silicon Valley Nation: Five epic road trips
Brian Fuller
12/21/2012 4:01 PM EST
The Oracle of Ohio
The very essence of why engineering is the future of America and innovation sat quietly in a bar booth in the basement of a historic building about 30 minutes outside Cleveland. When we approached, he stood up, stuck out his hand and said, "Hi, I'm Don. Glad to meet you."
Don Baechtel is a longtime EE Times reader, who took me up on me email offer of driving the Volt by on our Drive for Innovation. I wanted to see as many readers as time allowed and ask them face to face what they think the big challenges are. And I figured they'd love to drive the car.
Baechtel had no interest in the Volt, but he had a yellow pad full of challenges.
Over the next four hours (a round of beers and a steak dinner), he went through every one of at least two dozen problems, challenges and possibilities that his engineering mind and experience summoned. As dinner wound down, I asked him, "So what's No. 1 in your estimation? What's our biggest challenge?"
"Quality," he said. "Quality in electronics stinks."
A little light bulb went off in my head, and we set about to crowd-source the issue. Just how bad is the quality problem? EE Times and EE Life readers would help us, and they did, offering suggestions on questions for a survey I wanted to field to help define the problem.
It turned into a wonderful and informative mini-project, all because a single engineer cared enough to say "hey stop on by."
Good news is, there are thousands of Don Baechtels out there.
Related stories:
--Quality sucks doesn't it?
--Where has quality gone…and what can we do to get it back?
--Quality crisis in engineering
Next: 'Eddie'
The very essence of why engineering is the future of America and innovation sat quietly in a bar booth in the basement of a historic building about 30 minutes outside Cleveland. When we approached, he stood up, stuck out his hand and said, "Hi, I'm Don. Glad to meet you."
Don Baechtel is a longtime EE Times reader, who took me up on me email offer of driving the Volt by on our Drive for Innovation. I wanted to see as many readers as time allowed and ask them face to face what they think the big challenges are. And I figured they'd love to drive the car.
Baechtel had no interest in the Volt, but he had a yellow pad full of challenges.
Over the next four hours (a round of beers and a steak dinner), he went through every one of at least two dozen problems, challenges and possibilities that his engineering mind and experience summoned. As dinner wound down, I asked him, "So what's No. 1 in your estimation? What's our biggest challenge?"
"Quality," he said. "Quality in electronics stinks."
A little light bulb went off in my head, and we set about to crowd-source the issue. Just how bad is the quality problem? EE Times and EE Life readers would help us, and they did, offering suggestions on questions for a survey I wanted to field to help define the problem.
It turned into a wonderful and informative mini-project, all because a single engineer cared enough to say "hey stop on by."
Good news is, there are thousands of Don Baechtels out there.
Related stories:
--Quality sucks doesn't it?
--Where has quality gone…and what can we do to get it back?
--Quality crisis in engineering
Next: 'Eddie'
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