Another aspect of engineering that is difficult to communicate at the academic level is the role of failure. Many, and in fact, most products do not make it to the marketplace. Every one of these marginal products had a project engineer who lived through its birthing pains. Proposed methods often are not successes at the manufacturing level, and every idea had a proponent who is disappointed when it is not accepted by manufacturing. Tests often confirm exactly what we hoped would not be the case.
Customers often say that our latest and greatest feature is barely worth a yawn.
All of these cases of failure must be accepted with a certain level of maturity by the project engineer. But for young engineers on their first project, it may be traumatic. We try to teach the concept with a sports analogy. We suggest that the interns think in terms of football plays. Every play is designed to be a touchdown.