Engineering Roles at Functional Devices

David Mackey
3 min read
I want to spend this week discussing the role of our Engineers here at Functional Devices. We will focus on the relation to our customers. If you have been reading our blog posts over the past few months, you may have noticed that there are three of us who are writing. Sam, Henry and I only represent a fraction of the Engineers, but all of our roles are similar. Our responsibilities can be broken down into three areas: Design Engineer, Tech Support and Personal Customer Interaction.

Design Engineer

This is our primary role. We design new products from the ground up and see the projects all the way through production. I would compare our process to raising children. Engineers at some businesses raise their kids to be teenagers. Then they are passed off to another department to have them finish the last few years. We work differently at Functional Devices. Our engineers are there from the birth of the child (new project assignment) all the way through high school graduation (production). No one knows the kids better than their parents, which is a good segue into our next role: Tech Support.

Tech Support

The Engineers also handle Tech Support calls and e-mails. The reason for this is very simple: No one knows the products better than the people that designed them. Because we are an American owned and operated company, our Tech Support is homegrown. If you call in with a question, you won't be connected to a representative halfway across the world who has never seen a RIB in person and instead just has a binder full of common answers. Rather it is just us and our extensive knowledge of the innards and functionalities of our products.

Personal Customer Interaction

Sometimes, we make our way out to customers on the road. We go to trade shows, visit distributors, and participate in webinars and conference calls. We like our customers to see the faces and hear the voices of our Tech Support team because our customers are important to us, and we value personal connections.

In conclusion, the Engineers here at Functional Devices not only design new products, but we also interact directly with our customers. One advantage to that is that we hear directly from our customers about what they need, like or dislike about the industry and our products. In turn, we make better products that the customer actually wants.