The principle or act of collaboration sounds simple, doesn’t it? But, in fact, for those who have experienced it, and I am sure many would agree, on occasions, it can be quite the opposite. One of the dictionary definitions cites collaboration as “the action of working with another person or groups of people to produce something.” This statement, in a nutshell, perfectly describes the essence of my role as a mechanical design engineer. But, of course, like everything in this world, it’s not always that straightforward.
Working towards an end goal in product design and development means you have to be prepared to work across many teams with their own specialised parts of the puzzle to solve. As you might expect, this frequently leads to a difference of opinion in terms of agreeing on how to move forward with a project and disagreements regarding how long the process will or may take. More often than not, it takes a great deal of tact, diplomacy, patience, and compromise to resolve a highly complex technical issue, which, for example, can be anything such as the choice of material, having to redo a CAD drawing, or dealing with component tolerances, etc.
I am sure there is little doubt in everyone’s minds that each professional has their own specific role to perform, with the main one being to deliver for the client and be successful in bringing a product to market. With these objectives in mind, sticking together and working hand in hand to collaboratively benefit the end user is the only strategy to follow.
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