New Technologies Pushing Engineers to Become Better, Stronger, Faster

New Technologies innovations are entering the engineering workspace, creating design and production cycles that more efficient and allow for higher design iterations.

New Technologies Pushing Engineers to Become Better, Stronger, Faster

Chapter four of this year’s Salary  Career Survey focuses on the new technology that has entered the engineering world. These new technological innovations include the widespread adoption of 3D printing, robots, and Internet of Thing (IoT) devices. Adoption of these innovations has shifted work processes, design, production, and testing in many engineering firms. Let’s explore how different engineers view the new innovations and if they are beneficial to the engineering landscape.

According to our survey, the top tech innovation to infiltrate the engineering workspace is 3D printing at 74%. Behind that IoT devices came in at 33%, artificial intelligence (AI) at 20%, and collaborative robots at 13.5%. A small portion at 29% stated that no new tech innovations have entered their work environment. Outside of these tech innovations, other systems gaining ground in the engineering field are computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM), model-based design, simulation, collaborative software, machine vision, and augmented and virtual reality tools.

Our readers have felt the impact of these new technologies, but perhaps the pace is slower than advertised. Only 42% have felt that their jobs have changed due to the introduction of new technology; 43% have to learn new skills or acquire new certifications to use said technologies.

The new tools have pushed the design process to more prototyping of parts. Several readers in our survey responded that they use 3D printing to create prototypes or tooling for production parts. One reader states that “3D printing has changed how we approach prototyping and development testing,” and another notes that “3D printing allows us to increase the output of tooling production with very low cost.”

Automation and systems engineering have also been impacted by new tools and technologies. The role of automation in today’s engineering society is to create enhancements in the design and manufacturing sectors. This includes data gathering, simulation of production, sensor equipment, and predictive maintenance. One reader responds that “3D printing and automation has made my job much more challenging. Combining parts, preparing production fixturing, and time to market, all play a role.”

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