Common Myths About Materials Engineering
Non-materials engineers give several reasons for not seeking out materials engineering expertise when faced with decisions and problems during product development and manufacturing. These reasons are based on myths about the need for materials engineering and the experience and knowledge required for making decisions and solving problems where the selection and control of materials are concerned. These myths are as follows:
Myth 1. Materials engineering only involves lab and failure analyses. A result of this mind-set is that companies seek materials engineering support when there is a problem.
The Reality: Proactive consideration of the engineering of materials during product development, process development, or supplier evaluation will increase the likelihood of optimizing materials and processes to obtain the desired product performance, reliability, and cost. Many product failures can be avoided by using appropriate materials engineering methods starting in early in the product design lifecycle.
Myth 2. Materials engineering considerations are only needed for “high-tech” materials and applications. The labs of materials testing services are filled with failed products that do not meet design requirements, many of which are composed of common materials (e.g., steel, aluminum alloys, polypropylene, nylon, epoxy, silicon, nickel plating, and paint). These examples constitute a very small portion of the huge list of “low-tech” materials incorrectly selected, specified, and manufactured.
The Reality: Materials engineering is applicable and useful for the most basic of materials. Optimizing a product’s performance, reliability, and cost depends on selecting materials that have the optimum properties and on controlling the variation of these properties. Many products use materials that have not been optimized. These products are not as successful as they could have been. That is, their costs are higher than necessary, they launched late, or they do not meet their performance and reliability requirements.
Myth 3. Materials engineering decisions are intuitive and that anyone can make these decisions. The countless number of product recalls, field failures, missed product deadlines, poor supplier quality, and manufacturing quality issues indicates that intuition is not sufficient for making sound materials engineering decisions.
The Reality: Materials engineering is a discipline for which people earn B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees and then continue to apply the learning on a daily basis. In contrast, engineers in other disciplines might have taken one or two materials science classes incollege and occasionally apply this learning. Many product failures are the result of untested assumptions regarding the suitability of selected materials or processes.
Myth 4. Suppliers can be relied on for materials engineering support. This may be true if suppliers have materials engineers on staff and if they can take the time to address the decision or problem being considered.
The Reality: Many suppliers do not have materials engineers or they are focused on developing their companies’ products. Although a supplier without materials engineers on staff may be able to provide some guidance based on past experiences for general applications, they often do not have enough expertise to address applications that extend a short distance beyond previous experience.
Myth 5. Materials engineering is complicated, expensive, and time consuming. Many people believe that materials engineering is only for research, not for product development and manufacturing. They think that engineering the materials in a product will slow down product development and other projects.
The Reality: Materials engineering is applicable to product design, manufacturing process development and control, and quality control and improvement. Also, the information gained from materials engineering can actually help speed up product development and other products like cost reduction and quality improvement. The information helps engineering teams focus on the efforts required to obtain the properties that enable meeting a product’s performance, reliability, and cost requirements. Furthermore, many of the analysis tools used by materials engineering provide valuable information quickly. These analyses are not expensive, especially considering the time and money saved not pursuing a suboptimum option.