Documentation Is an Engineering Discipline, Not an Administrative Burden
In many engineering organizations, documentation is treated as something that happens after the design is done — a filing exercise, not an engineering activity. The result is incomplete, inconsistent, and often inaccurate records that cannot support a certification audit, cannot be handed over to a new engineering team without significant reverse engineering, and cannot serve as a reliable basis for engineering change decisions years after the original design.
At Pabst Electronics, documentation is an integral part of the design process. Every component value in a Pabst Electronics design has a calculation behind it. Every protection circuit has a sizing rationale. Every component rating has a derating verification. Every isolation boundary has an insulation coordination analysis. These calculations are not done informally and discarded — they are captured in structured documentation that becomes part of the permanent engineering record of the product.
This approach is not just good engineering practice — it is a direct requirement for safety certification. Certification bodies require evidence that design decisions were made deliberately and correctly. A complete design calculation package is that evidence.