As a "project engineer" I've come to appreciate why larger companies put R&D in a different building- so they can get something done. Anytime part of your duties include supporting manufacturing, you have a very hard time setting aside enough time to accomplish significant design goals. Instead the manufacturing support gets done and the development that can be done reasonably quickly gets done in spare time, research a new fitting-sure. Seriously, there is nothing I can do about part Z getting here 3 weeks late, yet I am dragged into those discussions all the time.
So if you're running a company or managing engineers, keep your functions separate, or else realize that someone working 25% on manufacturing support is in reality going to spend 75% of his time on it. Don't even drag them into it, you might help in the short run, but in the long run you're worse off if the entire company is running around putting out the fire of the moment.
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