The Expanding World of Engineers

According to Prof. Ramakrishna's article, "The Expanding World of Engineers", he stated that " an engineer's training helps to systematically analyze complex information and apply a holistic (systematic) approach in designing solutions."

It is true that throughout the education, engineers are trained to handle problems and come up with solutions in a systematic way such that the solutions are efficient and are able to tackle the problems effectively. An example would be when a student is asked to solve a complex mathematical question, the tutor would usually encourage him to use a method that is simple, and easy for others to understand so that less mistakes would be made and less time would be spent.

When an engineer analyze a complex information, he would usually first take note of the main points and tries to classify those points accordingly. This gives him a clearer view and enables him to see the main problems. After looking at the big picture, he would look at the details to see if there is any information that is useful to him that would enable him to design the solutions. Hence, by first summarising the information using main points and then looking at the small details for more data, the whole complex information could be analyzed systematically, without leaving out anything important.

After analyzing the information, an engineer would have to come up with solutions to solve the problems. He would usually approach the solutions in a holistic way so as to save time and effort. Thus, an engineer would first approach the main problem that leads to other problems, so that when the main problem is solved, the other problems could be solved as well with minimum time and effort. This could be done usually by listing out all the problems and try to link them together and see if there is any way of solving them with a method that is as simple as possible.