Prelude

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Kollmann is one of the most important aeronautical engineers in the story of piston aeroengine development in Germany in WWII. In 12 years, Dr.-Ing. Kollmann progressed from the role of senior engineer to chief engineer of the aeroengine design department in Daimler-Benz. This book is an historical record of his own engineering work in developing high performance piston aeroengines. The original document that Dr.-Ing. Kollmann wrote in 1947 is presented here in English with extensive additional material by the authors.

Cisco Switches in China: The Year of the Manager

Jan Gronski, managing director of the Cisco China Research and Development Center (CRDC), and Ivo Raznjevic, engineering director, set out to establish a new R&D facility in Shanghai, China. This case focuses on the building of a culture through human-resource practices while describing such steps as securing an appropriate building, assembling a work force, seeking appropriate projects, developing managers, building teams, evaluating performance, protecting intellectual property, and managing growth. The case presents specific challenges that arise regarding talent management: How does a manager overcome dramatic cultural differences within a diverse workgroup? Should a local female employee be promoted from a test engineer to a development manager? How should Raznjevic help his newest manager through his first encounter with Cisco's ranking system? What action, if any, should Raznjevic take regarding a senior engineer who sent out a controversial e-mail? This material highlights organizational culture and offers an opportunity for students to learn to recognize and manage difference. The case could be taught near the end of a term to serve as a review of organizational behavior at a graduate level or in an executive education program focusing on issues of team-building, growing managers from within, and related talent-management issues in a global context.

Improving Systems Thinking Skills Of Second Year Engineering Students By An Introductory Project

In 2011, the course Introductory Project in Electrical Engineering took place for the first time at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The course was devised to expose sophomore students to the discipline of electrical engineering and improve their systems thinking skills. The core of the course was a design project of a window cleaning robot. This task was carried out by teams of five students, with personal instruction by a mentor, a senior engineer in the Department. The present research, which used quantitative tools alongside qualitative ones, indicates significant improvement in systems thinking skills of students who took the course.

Application of BIM on Quantity Estimate for Reinforced Concrete

The focus of this study is on the differences in quantity estimates made by BIM and a senior engineer using conventional method for materials needed during construction. BIM-Revit Architecture 2012 is utilized to establish the information for two actual cases the control room for a new construction and a single floor on a school campus to conduct estimates for the amount of reinforced concrete needed. For comparison, an engineer with considerable experience is also asked to perform the above estimate. Data from the two estimates are compared and the unit price obtained from the Public Construction Commission is applied to calculate the price difference. The result shows that in Case 1, the engineers estimate is higher than that of BIM by 1.33%, while in Case 2, the engineers estimate is higher than that of BIM by 0.30%. The results indicate that estimates made by BIM have high accuracy. Thus, applying BIM toward the construction industry may effectively reduce human errors such as omissions and miscalculations.

The International Language of Codes

This article discusses how knowledge of ASME codes helped an engineer in his career. Aby Thomas was a young engineer in India in the 1990s when he got an invitation from a Saudi Arabian company for the job of a project engineer. Aby was able to get this job, thanks to his knowledge of manufacturing pressure vessels and boilers and of ASME code requirements. In that job, Aby helped the company in setting up to meet all the requirements for obtaining the ASME, USA, and PP Stamps in the first external audit. As a result, Aby was promoted a level, from project engineer (mechanical) to superintendent (fabrication) immediately and in the next year one more level as general superintendent. Later, Aby's experience with ASME and National Board codes helped him secure another job in Bahrain. He joined the Bahrain Petroleum Co. in 2002 at the Bahrain Refinery as a field supervisor and today he is employed as a senior engineer for cost and planning in the plant engineering department.