Engineer Design

Mr. Capan brings over ** years of experience in new product design to the table.

Following a 5 year stint in the U. S. Air Force repairing Air Traffic Control

Communications equipment, Ralph went on to college where he completed a 4 year

program in 3.5 years. Ralph completed his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering

Technology (BSEET) with a grade point average of 3.48 out of 4.0. Following

graduation, Ralph went to work at Texas Instruments as a Design Engineer. The rest is

history and is contained on his Resume.

Ralph is a fast learner he had to be in order to keep up with all of the variety of products

and approaches used by the various companies that he has worked on over the years.

At ITT, Ralph wrote the Reliability Program Plan and later was selected by upper

management to become the Leader of the TAAF Team in this position Ralph oversaw

the conductance of TAAF testing. One of Ralph’s tasks was to report out to the

customer’s program management and to ITTs management on all matters in relation to

the testing. The team consisted of 4 team members. One each from design

engineering, one from test engineering, one from Production Control, and one Reliability

Test Technician. As part of this team, Ralph wrote, with the assistance of the team, the

Test Plan, the Test Procedure, and the Test Report.

After gaining approval from his management and the customer’s management, he was

able to combine the Test Plan with the Test Procedure into one document. This

document, with some slight modification, was used on subsequent similar programs

throughout the division. Similarly, he wrote a generic PRAT Test Report that was used

to report on similar programs. These subsequent PRAT reports were later completed by

his test technician as they had to be generated every six months. These reports were

forwarded to him for review before being sent to the customer for acceptance. This

action resulted in freeing up many engineering hours and only required a review of the

report. These subsequent reports were written using the same reporting format and

were approved by the customer in a relatively short period of time. Reports that were

approved resulted in payment to the company by the customer. Ralph organized the

test data and presented it to the customer at the regularly scheduled scoring

conferences.

Also at ITT, Ralph identified over 130 issues on 14 cable installation drawings just

before a contract was to be awarded to a vendor. The discrepancies were corrected.

At Delco Systems Operations (DSO), Ralph quickly became a team player. After

several unsuccessful attempts by seasoned reliability engineers to obtain customer

approval for an ESS test report on the guidance system, Ralph was given the task write

the report. After spending two weeks researching the archives, he completed the report

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and submitted it to management. It was then forwarded to the customer who approved

it within 2 weeks. Subsequent reports were issued by the technician assigned to him

and they were likewise approved in record time. This ESS Report demonstrated the

effectiveness of Burn-In in reducing infant mortality. This report was developed during

the acceptance phase of production and was forwarded to the customer on a monthly

basis by the test technician after being reviewed by Ralph.

At GD he analyzed track pads on the M1A1 tank. He reviewed, assessed, and

categorized track test incidents on the M1A1 tanks across all durability tests. He

maintained a database to correlate government test data with previous similar test data.

He also conducted incident investigation on failed track pads and road-wheels and

attended government sponsored scoring conferences.

At Ford, using the generic format, he created a process, based on the military STDs for

generating DFMEAs. In addition to linking them to a Block Diagram, this process, when

linked to the Robustness approach, insured that he had a thorough and bullet proof

approach for creating a good test. This approach was later used to evaluate the design

from a system level approach.

When he was at Ford, he performed an analysis on the electrical system of the Lincoln

Continental and identified a problem with the connector the vendors were using. It

appeared that the harness vendor did not coordinate the type or manufacturer of

connector used by the subassembly vendor. Thus when the two connectors were

mated while they were interoperable they were not water proof and thus electrical shorts

occurred in very wet conditions. The respective drawings did not specify the connector

manufacturer. It only stated that the connector had to have a certain pin out

configuration. The solution to the problem was to insure that both the harness vendor

and the subassembly vendor purchased the connector from the same connector vendor

and this information was then included on the drawing.

When he went to Visteon, he worked on mechanical systems (axle and drivelines). He

performed similar analysis for generating DFMEAs as before. On one occasion, a

design engineer asked him to help him prepare for a presentation he had to give to Ford

Senior management in 10 days. He needed to have a DFMEA completed, a P-Diagram

done, the Reliability and Robustness Matrix needed to be completed, and a Block

Diagram done. The Design Engineer had retrieved the latest DFMEA from the archives

and it contained 16 pages 6 of which were repeated. He told Ralph that he could not go

in front of the chief engineer with this information. He asked Ralph for help. Ralph told

him that they could complete the project if they worked together over the next 2

weekends. He agreed. They completed the project. Ralph gave the presentation to

the Chief Engineer. The chief engineer later commented that this was the most

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comprehensive and well thought out approach to Robustness and DFMEA he has seen

in all his 34 years at Ford.

Ralph saved Visteon millions of dollars by identifying and resolving a critical reliability

issue during Target Agreement negations. He had noticed that Ford’s requirements

were for 98 full test vehicles when it should have been 16. He raised this issue to

management who then challenged Ford. The requirement was then reduced. On a

separate occasion, Ralph provided technical and statistical support to resolve a

manufacturing issue related to axle preload.

Ralph prepared detailed interface and block diagrams on 12 axle / drive-train programs

that allowed for full weighting of the interfaces with that of the components and acted as

a roadmap for DFMEA Development. These Block Diagrams increased DFMEA

thoroughness 10 times and resulted in a reduction of over 70% in DFMEA development

time.

Ralph identified numerous issues during a “Fresh Eyes Review” of the first articles

produced. These issues included lack of drip loops in two instances, incorrect spacing

of tie-downs, and lack of a tie down for a cable harness.

While at GM, Ralph generated over 75 DFMEAs on various power train subsystems for

a new truck program. These detailed DFMEAs were comprehensive and evaluated the

design from the part level through the system level. The chief engineer for GM truck

stated that these DFMEAs “raised the bar” on how DFMEAs were performed at GM.

Later, while working a Magna Donnelly, Ralph learned that his approach to DFMEA

development had become the standard way to perform DFMEAs at GM truck.

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