Seriously can someone teach me how to explain this term?/subject during a family gathering the more i try to explain the more complex it becomes! thank you everyone!
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Engineering usually begins with concepts that are made into designs and then built and tested until they find a solution that works.
Reverse engineering is starting with the solution that works and taking it apart to learn how it was designed.
The purpose is when there is a successful product it may be a trade secret or patented and others wanting to compete in the market don’t want to have to start from scratch like the original company did to figure out what concepts might work to achieve the result. So they get a jump start by figuring out what they did and using that you then engineer their competing product or next generation that builds upon the first.
For example: Over many years and trials, a development team discovers how to make a pharmaceutical drug that cures a cancer no other drug cures. It is registered with the FDA and its chemical composition is protected under a patent for 20 years. Another company wants to also manufacture and sell that drug as a generic version that is more affordable for patients, but to be more affordable they can’t spend years in development and trials. So instead they will take the new drug and use equipment to find out what’s the active and inactive ingredients are and their ratios, then they will try to find other inactive ingredients that don’t violate the patent but can still deliver the benefits of the same ratio of active ingredients, and once they figure out how to manufacture it they can offer it as an alternative to the innovative drug. By starting with the innovative drug and reverse engineering it, they are already starting with something they know will work because it has already been tested, and their efforts are much smaller to focus only on inactive ingredients and producing it, which means they will spend significantly less on development and can offer their product for a much lower cost and still be profitable.
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