The Le Taureau Engineering Philosophy

Simplicity and Complexity

It's been awhile since I've posted, and I'll keep this one brief. 

Being a young and very inexperienced engineer, a lot of my projects have been extremely overengineered. For example, my bionic hand does not truly solve any problems (of course, the intent of the project was educational). Many amputees prefer not to have any motors in their prosthetic hands/arms because they focus too much on form rather than function. Today's advanced prosthetic technology is undeniably fascinating, but it doesn't often make amputees' lives any easier than simpler decades-old mechanical tech. 

Perhaps there exists a problem in the intense study of the complex, especially pertaining to engineering students. I remember my first internship at Baker Hughes being surprised how mundane my co-workers jobs seemed—nobody was solving triple integrals, deriving partial differential equations, or applying ANOVA methodology. Instead, they were typing emails, attending LEAN 5S meetings, and approving TPS reports. Bureaucracy definitely plays a role, but I digress; my point is that as a student I was shocked to see how little complex "engineering" was done in the real-world. Learning to solve complex problems is vital for obvious reasons, but simple problems do not require complex solutions. And when you are working in a large team, complex problems are broken down significantly. 

More information coming soon!