I'm in engineering as well, I have to use a combo of handwritten notes, email files, physical job folders and memory to juggle all the design projects I have going on at any one time. Then add the ones in production or in the field being installed that I have to be available for phone conferences and such and it gets messy.
Mgt doesn't seem to understand just trying to manage the amount of information we have these days is becoming a full time job unto it's own, processing the orders into manufacturing is now taking a back seat to information exchanges.
Personally, I'm not sure how or when that's likely to change, but as a designer what I need is an assistant to handle the mudane tasks.
I'm looking into using spread sheets to help, but that requires even more time just to load it. For some repeat projects I've decided that once or twice a week I'll process those all at one time, used to do them as they came up.
Guess I could take the time I spend on this forum and apply that... Nah!!!!!!
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