Ford Motor Company, Electronic Instrument Cluster Engineering,
Dearborn, MI

07/80 - 04/83

Product Design Engineer Senior: Led a group of eight engineers responsible for design and development of Ford's second generation Electronic Instrumentation Module (EIM) released on the 1984 Mark and Continental.  The program used a "cradle‑to‑grave" product development.  I was responsible for the program from advanced engineering through product launch.  Responsibilities included developing engineering budgets, program timing, staff selection, quarterly management status reviews, microcontroller architecture, algorithm development and circuit design reviews.  The EIM used an advanced multi microcomputer design to achieve low system cost and high reliability.  The cluster included Ford's first electronic non‑volatile memory odometer.  It also included the first use of non‑volatile memory for self-diagnosis of intermittent operation.  I am co‑inventor on a patent application covering odometer storage strategies used in the design.  I received a Henry Ford Technological Award nomination citing the unique multi microcomputer design and non‑volatile memory strategies used for odometer storage.   Results, a successful launch, on time, within budget. 

Ford Motor Company, Electronic Instrumentation Task Force, Dearborn, MI

10/76 - 07/80

Product Design Engineer A:  Lead design engineer on Ford's 1980 Mark VII/Lincoln Message Center.  Responsibilities included developing program timing, engineering budget estimates, product variable cost estimates, reviewing facility costs, manufacturing tooling costs and vendor tooling costs along with the complete circuit/system design.  The Message Center was a Motorola 6800 microprocessor based instrumentation product. The complete design included 11 integrated circuits, used 4 different integrated circuit technologies and required the design of 4 custom integrated circuits.  Responsible for definition, specification, vendor source selection and development of the custom integrated circuits. With 8 K of ROM and a 256 X 8 RAM it represented Ford's largest instrumentation computer system.  I received a Henry Ford Technological Award nomination for Message Center's computer architecture and system design.

Ford Motor Company, Advanced Instrumentation Engineering, Dearborn, MI

05/76 - 10/76

Product Design Engineer B: ‑ Responsible for developing working instrumentation for vehicle installation to demonstrate potential products to management. In addition to designing and fabricating hardware I prepared complete circuit schematics, parts lists, engineering specifications, etc. for staff offices to prepare program cost estimates.

Ford Motor Company, Advanced Instrumentation Engineering, Dearborn, MI

08/74 - 05/76

Product Design Engineer: Designed and built various specialty circuits to support engine emissions programs.  One circuit was a timer circuit using silver coulometer technology to measure engine on time from which we inferred the vehicle mileage.  Co‑inventor on a patent covering that circuit.  Prepared technical concept product proposals.  One combined a clock with a vehicle maintenance reminder using non-volatile electronic memories.  A second included a calculator which plugged into a receptacle designed into the vehicle's instrument panel.  Once inserted the calculator connected into vehicle speed and fuel circuits to display trip functions such as distance to empty, miles per gallon and trip miles.

Ford Motor Company, Advanced Instrumentation Engineering, Dearborn, MI

08/72 - 08/74

Product Engineer (Ford College Graduate Program): Designed and developed a tachometer converter.  The circuit used discrete transistor logic to divide ignition pulses by two converting 4 cylinder tachometers for use on 8 cylinder engines. Significant was the selection of coupling resistor/capacitor networks that minimized interface costs.  The result was cost effective interface circuitry adapting a recently tooled new tachometer design that eliminated the need for retooling.