Self-Made: A Conversation with Drew Henry

Many people have asked if it is possible to become an engineer without a degree. When we pose this question to Google, we get more than 30 million results in response to this question. Answers ranged from a solid no to multiple sites listing jobs in engineering that don’t require a degree. In reality, it depends on the field, the job, and often where you live. To learn more about this path to engineering, we decided to interview a successful business-owner and self-taught engineer to get his take on this topic. 

BDR: Tell us a little bit about yourself - your career path, business, and primary inventions/products.

My first introduction to engineering was in high school when I took a drafting class with some simple CAD as well as shop and basic electrical engineering courses. Straight out of high school, I took a job with mechanical applications in which we were rebuilding complicated systems from the ground up. The assemblies were very large, about 16 feet wide and we had to deal with the heating and cooling of these systems which caused large expansion and contraction of the material – so dealing with thermal expansion and thermodynamics. I had the opportunity to work closely with mentors on writing code and designing systems. I had greater exposure to engineering when a couple of companies came in and I got to work closely with and learn from those engineers.  

After gaining more experience with the product development side of our early jobs, my brother and I decided to start our own company. The first one was Axiom Graphics in which we developed a less expensive and much faster process which originally was very difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. The second was Blue Line Technologies which was in the gas and oil industry. And our current company is Laundry Jet which transports clothing from any location to a laundry room and is used primarily for high end residential and commercial applications. We have patents in each of these industries. 

BDR: When did you know you wanted to be a mechanical engineer?

I grew up tinkering with things, but I wanted to be a mechanical engineer when we needed it. We needed it most after starting our first company. I knew from previous experience that I wanted to be involved with the mechanical side of product development.

BDR: What are some of the most important design principles you have learned over your career?

I have learned that the key parts of design are knowing your market. I was familiar with the business side of product development and knew that we needed to know the needs and wants of the clients who would be buying our product. Know what you need and be connected to those you are marketing your product for. Know what they are going to require, that is number one. If you can’t meet the fundamental requirements, the product won’t be successful. 

As a follow up to that, get feedback from your buyers. They will see things about your product that you did not see or use it in a way that you had not anticipated. This feedback is crucial to continuing to develop your products. 

I have also learned that it is vital to be good at coming up with concepts and prototypes early on and to be creative in that process. Learn to develop products quickly to a functioning model. Tinker with these products and get feedback so you can make changes quickly and easily. Develop so that you can design a lot of these prototypes in house as it will keep costs down and you can make and test them on the fly. It speeds up the development process a lot. 

BDR: Do you follow a specific process or procedure when designing a product?

When we first started, we didn’t have a specific process that we followed for designing a process. But looking back, after these three companies, we spent time trying to define our design process. For us, we looked at what the market wanted or needed, what our competition offered, considered the cost to develop the product, and the price to market. We have learned to with costs in all these areas. You may have a great product, but if one thing is off, wait to develop it.

BDR: You are all self-taught, what did you do to teach yourself to be proficient in engineering?

When I first started, the best way to learn engineering principles was by reading as much as you could, focusing on what was directly in front of you (such as manufacturing engineering), and share information with other engineers. We took a very specific approach – know the demands on the product from start to finish, such as how it will need to function, how will it need to be processed, what are the specifications. We developed our skills by looking at and mirroring things we liked from other companies. Now, it is much easier to learn these things and there are more resources available to engineering students. There is so much available online like GrabCAD to pull from or tutorials on YouTube that were not previously available to us at the time we were learning.  

BDR: What has made your product development successful? 

Our most successful products are always simple. Many of our kitchen products, non-mechanical devices, and all our products in the graphic industry still sell. I believe that because they were simple, they were appealing to the customer. They knew that they were reliable and easy to use. 

As for what prompted us to make them, we always found a need before designing a product. We found that there was a need for a new product or a different/better way to perform a process. We came up with ideas and refined them until they grew into success. 

BDR: How did you decide what to create? How did you know what products to focus on? 

As previously stated, with practically all of our products, we found that there was a need for change in  some way. With our first company, we discovered a way to do something (go from printers to paper to vinyl) that was expensive and difficult in a way that was easy and cheap. We solved that problem and started our company. 

With Laundry Jet it was the same – it wasn’t “let’s go make a company,” it was more like “this is a useful product that we believe would be successful. 

BDR: What would you like to have known as a beginning engineer?

I wish I had a better understanding of the learning process and more tools to speed up that process. Engineers need to understand the plan and be creative. We are at a point in time where we have so many tools to help engineers speed up the design process. These tools speed up the process so much. 

A good engineer has the ability to get to an answer quickly. I think it is important not to get caught up on justifying your answer. Be more focused on finding the right answer. Some engineers think their idea is always the best one – it is vital to be open to different ideas and consider different options before being so set on your own design, or even all of one design. Take time to brainstorm and bring different components of ideas together to make the best product you can. Don’t jump to conclusions because it can mess up the end product. Do your homework, learn to filter through the information that is out there to create a functional, cost-effective product. 

We had an engineer work for us who didn’t pay attention to which components he was using. Those components that were three times as expensive as other options and was a year behind the competition. Doing more work at the beginning really pays off in the long run. 

BDR: Anything else you would like to add?

Right now is an exciting time to be an engineer. It used to be that engineers would specialize in something and might be designing a certain part with different variations for their entire career. Now, with all the tools, it is a much easier and creative process. Things that used to take years to manufacture are now manufactured much faster. Engineering is a great field to be in.