Okay, my point is to get a job. First of all, we must clearly understand the machinery industry with Chinese characteristics. The development of the machinery industry here is abnormal. At least at present, the development of major cities is extremely uneven. In many areas, when it comes to mechanical engineers, people will immediately equate them with tool makers. It is true that currently more than 70% of China's mechanical engineers are mold engineers. This is a tragedy. The reason for this phenomenon is the imbalance of our industry and the industrial imbalance that evolved from large-scale production. The reason is very simple. If all is fine machining, small batch high-quality processing, and machining is the mainstream, then at least half of our mold engineers will be unemployed; but these products are the specialty of European and American countries, so most of what we do is Something that foreigners are not willing to do. Moreover, except for metal product processing molds, most mold products are made of organic materials. The processing seriously pollutes the environment, and we can only pick up things that foreigners are unwilling to make. From the perspective of the machinery industry itself, the general directions can be divided into: structural application, mold application, application analysis, manufacturing technology, production technology, etc.; the small directions can be divided into: structural design, mold design, manufacturing engineering, system engineering (automation Control), process engineering, process engineering, equipment engineering, quality control, logistics basics, mechatronics, etc. It can be further subdivided into engineers of various sizes, large and small. So at present, looking at the machinery industry itself, due to the serious imbalance in the distribution of the industry, when analyzing problems from such a structure, we don’t need to analyze it in such detail, we can only analyze it from a general direction. Secondly, we must make it clear that it is meaningless to discuss an unbalanced industrial structure. Which ones are out of balance, the mold already mentioned is one of them. The consequence of a large number of mold engineers is not that our mold technology is strong. On the contrary, it leads to a mixed bag of good and bad in the mold industry, low business level, and industrial chaos. There are so many mold industries in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and Dongguan and Zhuhai, but real masters are rare and rare. Therefore, the proliferation of the mold industry has also led to a mess in the future of this industry. The overall technical level and income of our current mold engineers are generally lower than those in other industries. What else is out of balance is the car! Now is the economic crisis, and the automobile industry is collapsing. It seems that the automobile industry has been affected by the global economy and has been unlucky enough to be involved. Actually it’s not! This is true for foreign companies, but absolutely wrong for our domestic automobile industry. Because today’s collapse has been known for several years. A friend upstairs hit the nail on the head, because we only import things, and basically we don’t have anything that we can use ourselves. The automobile industry itself has considerable technical content, but we carry out OEM processing in a labor-intensive way. As a result, the whole body was affected by the global economy, and the first place to be laid off was the automobile industry. Don’t be fooled by the high income of the automobile industry in the past few years. That is because our cars are so much more expensive than foreigners’ and it is caused by high profits. The current automobile industry can only be said to be precarious and carpe diem. Thirdly, what is the future development trend? Industrial imbalance is temporary, but no one knows how long it will last. However, from a development perspective, social industries are self-regulating, so structural design and automation control, manufacturing engineering, and the rapidly developing mechatronics and other directions that have been suppressed for a long time will slowly regain their social status. In particular, the directions of automatic control, quality control, and mechatronics have made great progress in recent years. The industry of primary processing and large-scale simple processing will definitely decline. I have been educating my employees that now is the era of high-quality products, and we should not continue to design and produce products in a small-scale farmer economy. Don’t choose industries that “may” become mainstream, choose industries that “already” or “definitely” become mainstream. At present, in terms of specific types of work in the machinery industry, design and research and development are still the top choice, followed by industrial control/automation control, quality engineering, process technology, etc. Don't do non-standard, hardware, machine tool, or mold work. In the machinery industry, there is a saying, "To survive, do hardware." This sentence itself means that hardware is easy to make money, but it makes you Half dead, starving to death, and definitely unable to recover. Most of the hardware production is non-standard, and it has a lot to do with machine tools.
These industries are still in a very sluggish period due to the impact of the general environment. In addition, there are too many employees, and there will be no improvement in the short term. Finally, the issue of mentality. It is true that in terms of career planning, I will also give such a plan when making career ladders for employees, but after all, promotion is achieved step by step. I have been working in Fortune 500 for so long, and I have also become a manager, but I have never seen a Chinese person become a principle engineer in a foreign company, let alone a chief engineer. Therefore, for those who are just starting out in the industry, it is more important to take every step solidly than to dream about a bright future in the future (of course, you still have to have goals, don’t give up). One more thing to mention, in foreign capital, the manager's rank is not necessarily higher than that of his employees. One of my employees has a higher income than me. For example, the income and rank of the principal engineer are higher than those of the manager, which is equivalent to If the director is a chief engineer, his salary is at the VP (vice president) level. This also reflects the respect foreigners have for engineering and technical personnel. In comparison, we in China really underestimate our personnel in the machinery industry. I have said all this to give you confidence, but the road must be solid. You cannot get started in the machinery industry in 3-5 years. I have been working for 6 or 7 years before I barely feel that I have reached the threshold. Be wary of arrogance and impetuosity, and work steadily and steadily. This is the most basic mentality when working in this industry. Therefore, the poster, analyze the current situation clearly and combine it with your own situation to find out the direction that is most suitable for you. I personally recommend that you start from the direction of R&D and design, because this is a comprehensive major and a qualified mechanical designer. You need to be familiar with almost all the knowledge in the mechanical industry, and it is also the strongest training of a person's character and ability. If you have front-line work experience, you will gain more, because the so-called mechanical design is not just about drawing drawings. I mentioned the difference between designers and draftsmen in my answer to other friends. You can refer to my reference link below, which is a post I gave to other friends 2 years ago. In mechanical design, structure design & application analysis is the first priority (I usually use English, maybe the Chinese translation is not very accurate, including some in the previous article, please forgive me), and I transferred from the design department to other mechanical industries. All are very welcome. If you feel that the starting point for design work is too high, you can start with the manufacturing process. However, in this case, the road to development will become a little longer. Add some questions about organic materials (plastics) and electronic products. Strictly speaking, electronic products are not classified as machinery. If it is a mechanical industry related to electronic products, most of them belong to the mechanical structure category, and it is simpler than specialized mechanical structure design. Personally, I don’t recommend you to engage in it, at least don’t try it when you first enter the industry, so as not to give people a nondescript feeling in the future. Organic materials, as a major branch of mechanical materials, are very promising. Both personal development and income are top-notch. My company developed into a Fortune 500 company based on a patent-protected organic material formula. It can be seen that organic materials (plastics) have been a very good specialty for decades. The one under me is engaged in the research and development of organic materials. An engineer's annual income is 200,000. However, to engage in this industry, the professionalism is too strong, and it is basically impossible for those who have majored in mechanics to engage in it. Generally, only those with organic chemistry (polymer major) can do it. If the poster is referring to mold work, then as I said before, it is not recommended. # Regarding mechanical design itself, it does not distinguish between industries. Every time I communicate with headhunters, I will educate them not to distinguish between automobiles, medical equipment, construction machinery, ships, etc. Because there are very big differences in the products themselves, but as for the machines themselves, they are all the same. It's a very simple reason. If you open the "Mechanical Design Manual", the bible of our mechanical design industry, it will never be biased towards any one industry or product. It only contains the basics of design, structural strength, tolerance coordination, Threaded connections, interference connections, welding, linkage mechanisms, etc. If you master all these common parts, then for you, there will be no difference in the structural methods between building a car and building an atomic bomb. It's just that different products have different levels of complexity in using the technology.
#For example, if you want to design a car, when designing the frame, you need to focus more on structural strength, balance stability, material properties, linkage performance, fatigue strength, etc. And if you are asked to design a precision instrument, you may have to consider more module connection performance, assembly performance, processing accuracy, surface treatment, etc. Only at this time will the differences between different product industries be considered. In my design team, there are only two categories: metal parts design and plastic parts design, and they will not be refined. #R&D design is embodied in products. At present, our relatively developed product industries include the shipbuilding industry, represented by 7xx Research Institute, Jiangnan Shipyard, etc.; heavy industry machinery/automation machinery, represented by Sany Heavy Industry, Zhenhua Port Machinery, etc. etc.; the telecommunications industry, represented by Huawei, CITIC, Putian Post, etc.; the medical machinery, represented by GE, Siemens, Philips, etc.; and some infrastructure industries, such as transportation, logistics, etc., which have a lot of automation. Machinery requires design and development, and they are all very good industries, including warehouse automation systems, airport logistics systems, automatic elevators/ladders, automatic doors, automated assembly lines, etc. #In other words, only industries where R&D and design fully reflect their value will have development prospects. Such industries are usually industries with relatively high technology content. The research and development of the automobile industry is also very good abroad, but our simple introduction of technology has led to industrial imbalance. Otherwise, automobiles are also a good choice. The research and development in these industries mentioned above requires a large team to complete, and only in this way can an engineer's maximum ability be brought into play. ##Application analysis, specific to the position, is usually System Engineer or CAE engineer. The main responsibility of CAE engineer is to conduct simulation evaluation of existing designs or designs for research and development, including finite element analysis, mold flow analysis, and risk assessment. , DFMEA, QFD, etc. product feasibility analysis, and finally provide a feasibility report for final management to evaluate. It can be said that to a large extent, this report may have the power of life or death for a project. In English, we call it, kill barrel. I don’t know how to translate it accurately, but it shows the importance of CAE application analysis. The system engineer is more important. Generally speaking, the system engineer has a higher level than the average R&D engineer. He is usually the backup of the project manager. His main job is to be responsible for the entire product/project and ensure that its functionality and quality strictly meet customer needs. At the same time, he not only needs to conduct a feasibility analysis of the entire product, but also evaluates the prognosis of the product, including future maintenance costs and the possibility of further development. He will complete the final test report and closing report of the entire product, and assist the project manager to complete the corresponding delivery report. ### To facilitate your understanding, I can introduce the composition of the R&D team of a friend of mine, which is very typical: 12 mechanical designers, 4 electronic engineers, 6 software engineers, 2 electromechanical debugging engineers, 1 CAE engineer, 1 system engineer, 1 PDM system management assistant, and 2 test engineers. This is a typical small team, fully functional. Among them, "2 electromechanical debugging engineers, 1 CAE engineer, and 1 system engineer" are the application analysis I mentioned earlier. Hope this helps.