How Engineers Create Value For Companies

As the Nigerian economy continually dips and businesses and the people suffer through it, I kept wondering why we haven’t been able to harness the engineering capital to reduce or eliminate the suffering. Engineering capital helps a nation to alleviate both human and business suffering.

Apart from companies shutting down or leaving the country due to the high cost of operating a business in Nigeria, it's important to factor in the fact that engineering is greatly under-utilized and greatly underserves Nigerians. And I believe this is not unconnected with the kind of education engineers in Nigeria are receiving presently.

Most engineering graduates don’t even know what engineering is all about. When you mention engineering all they think about is the field of engineering they studied in school. Yes, they call themselves engineers but see themselves as either electrical, mechanical, biomedical, chemical, civil, or software engineers. Their discipline first defines them as engineers.

It is pertinent to understand that engineering is primarily all about problem-solving. This means someone who studied electrical engineering is an engineer who solves electrical problems. Someone who studied civil engineering is an engineer who solves structural, water, and transportation-related issues. The engineering part is a focus on problem-solving.

This simply means that an engineer should be able to solve any problem they come across and, in the process, develop technology, systems, or products that will be used by people and will better their lives. I have always asked this question: are Nigerian companies that employ engineers optimizing their capabilities?

How Engineers Create Value for Industry

Engineering is both a mindset and a capability. You don’t train the mind or develop capability in the classroom. No one can ever perform beyond their level of knowledge and training. Indeed, people can rise to the level of your expectations but unless they are equipped with the mindset and capability, they won’t be able to reach that expectation.

Recently, I saw a news headline that said Airtel Nigeria's energy (diesel) bill has risen to N28 billion naira a year. My first question was: don’t they have engineers in their employment? Airtel is a telecom company which makes it a purely engineering company. This simply demonstrates that engineers understand the employment of most companies are constrained by job descriptions and departments.

As the cost of energy increases, the cost of doing business may become high and of course, they will transfer that cost to their customer and gradually it will get to a point they can’t handle and would have to either divest out of the Nigerian market or close down the business entirely. Guinness Nigeria, Shoprite, GSK, and other companies followed the route.

This is where engineers need to start focusing on creating value for the company they are working for. That is what our Engineers In Industry program is all about. They play a critical role in creating value for companies by focusing on efficiencies and optimizing resources across various dimensions, which directly impacts profitability and growth. There are two significant ways engineers can create value for companies:

1. Reduce Cost

Engineers reduce the cost of doing business by seeking efficiencies in every part of the business. Always understand that what kills a business isn’t from without it but from within it. They continuously identify areas where processes can be streamlined, reducing waste, redundancies, and delays.

While preparing engineering students for industrial training, we prepare them to create value for those organizations rather than just focus on being consumers and receivers. Almost every organization in Nigeria suffers from the rising cost of operations most especially costs related to energy.

It doesn’t matter what field of engineering they are majoring in; we require every engineering student to understand how to conduct energy audits/assessments and design an efficient energy system for the company they are working for. Spiraling energy costs can significantly negatively impact the profitable running of a company. It's important to understand where energy is being wasted, and how to build efficiency into the energy systems and introduce renewable energy to it.

Engineers create value by reducing fixed, variable, marketing & sales, and operational costs. This requires engineers to go beyond technical knowledge. They need to understand how to create value via channels, relationships, activities, distribution, and so on.

Lowering costs directly improves the bottom line, allowing companies to invest in innovation or pass savings onto customers. Airtel, for instance, should have long had recommendations from its engineers on either the introduction of solar energy technologies or the production of biodiesel to operate their generating sets throughout the country. This way they can generate and sell energy (biodiesel) thereby increasing their revenue.

2. Increase Revenue

Traditionally, the roles engineers play in a company are technical. It could be working in the factory, repairing faulty devices, or maintaining systems. Engineers are not seen as people who can increase revenue. When a company is going through revenue challenges, most CEOs let go of their engineers and employ more marketers and salespeople. To them, marketers and salespeople are the ones responsible for revenue generation and increase.

In my book, Design Solutions for Humans, I talk about how engineers can design products that meet customer needs more effectively, leading to higher sales. It is really surprising that most engineering faculties if not all have no program to train engineering students in product design and development.

Engineers should be able to study a market and uncover opportunities for new products through underserved or unserved market needs. I once did that for an employer. He didn’t buy into the idea I suggested because UI asked for a percentage of the profit, so I leveraged his system and delivered the value.

They can help their employer to be a monopoly, high differentiate and enhanced compactivities by creating innovations that open new markets. When an organization unleashed its engineering capital (the sum of the engineering capability it has in its employment), it will increase revenue by making its competitors either clients or partners. As partners, they can reach new markets and open up new opportunities.

By empathizing with customers and using data, they can improve product quality and reliability, thereby enhancing brand reputation and customer loyalty. This way they deliver solutions that add value to customers, which help drive top-line growth for companies.

Most companies don’t really understand what engineering is all about and how it can be optimized to move the company forward. No matter how diverse the company is, engineers can make it better, faster and stronger. By doing this, companies ensure that their engineering teams not only solve immediate technical problems but also contribute to long-term business growth and competitiveness.

Companies that employ engineers, need to rethink what they believe engineering is and what engineers can do. In many cases, not optimally deploying and utilizing the engineering capital within their organization is like a thirsty man who is surrounded by water but is to blind to see it.

With the engineering mindset, engineers see opportunities to optimize processes, reduce cost and increase revenue. And with the engineering capabilities, they are able to capture the opportunities and translate it into growth for their employer. This requires continually training their minds and equipping them with the engineering capabilities so they can improve their engineering currency and value creation.

Are you optimizing the engineering capital (talent) within your organization?