That's what many engineers told us during the in-depth interviewing conducted for the turnkey project survey (see Packaging World, September '98, p. 58). "The specs for a project would be defined by our maintenance engineers, our manufacturing engineers and our production personnel," says a planner at a food plant located in the Plains states.
A mechanical engineer at a Southern plant of a national drug manufacturer says that many departments are now involved in writing a project's specs. "It would include our packaging engineering group, marketing group, sales group, corporate engineering, plant engineering, safety and environmental groups and our production and maintenance personnel, too," he says.
"Depending on the project, specs could come from production, technical services or even quality assurance people," says the supervisor of industrial engineering at a large pharmaceutical manufacturer.
Or as one senior project engineer complained, "Specs come from too many departments. Production, maintenance, technical services, design engineering and project engineering will all be involved. The latter three departments are responsible for selecting the vendor," says this Pennsylvania-based engineer with a large pharmaceutical house.
Of course, corporate engineering groups are far from obsolete in these large companies. "Our company has a corporate technical services group that performs as a central engineering section," points out a project engineer for a New Jersey-based health and beauty aids maker.
A senior engineer at a St. Louis pharmaceutical company agrees. "Our specs come from engineering, packaging and our technical services departments," he says.
The senior equipment engineer at a Midwest healthcare product maker may have just stepped out of a company communications briefing. He told Packaging World's researcher that "it's considered proprietary information."
