Difference between reverse engineering and re engineering?

Answer 1

Reverse engineering is when you have an existing item and you strip it down to see how it's made so that you can copy it and make more.

Reengineering is a term applied to altering the practices and/ or methods of a company or a business - it's not something that engineers do. It's, essentially, technobabble talk for "changing the way the company does things".

Answer 2

To reverse engineer a product is to examine it and probe it in order to reconstruct a plan from which it could be built, and the way it works.

For instance if I took my clock apart, measured all the gears, and developed a plan for a clock, understanding how the gears meshed together, this would be reverse engineering.

Reverse engineering is often used by companies to copy and understand parts of a competitors product, which is illegal, to find out how their own products work in the event that the original plans were lost, in order to effect repair or alter them.

Reverse engineering products is illegal under the laws of many countries, however it does happen. There have been celebrated cases of reverse engineering in the third world.

Re-engineering is the adjustment, alteration, or partial replacement of a product in order to change its function, adapting it to meet a new need.

For instance welding a dozer blade into the frame of my Ford fiesta car is an example of re-engineering, in order to clear snow, or drive through my neighbors kitchen.

Re-engineering is often used by companies to adapt generic products for a specific environment (e.g. add suspension for rally car, change shape of conveyor belt to fit a factory shape, alter frequencies of a radio transmitter to fit a new countries laws).

Answer 3

Reverse engineering is buying a product, than taking it apart to see how it works. All Chinese fake products are made like this.

Re engineering is just engineering something for the second time, probably because the first design failed.