Manufacturing Engineer

In short, a Manufacturing Engineer is concerned with understanding, analyzing, and improving complex industrial, manufacturing, and infrastructure systems/processes. What does that mean?

Nearly everything you use in your daily life is man-made, or ‘manufactured’. Whether it be a car you drive or an article of clothing you wear, at its most basic level, Manufacturing Engineers take ideas from a concept to a working product.

Some common responsibilities of a Manufacturing Engineer are:

• Design a product
• Select the best technologies and processes for manufacturing it
• Plan and design the factory that will produce the product, and
• Oversee the running, management, maintenance, and improvement of the factory. ¹https://www.engineering.unsw.edu.au/mechanical-engineering/study-with-us/types-of-mechanical-and-manufacturing-engineering/manufacturing-engineering

What Do Manufacturing Engineers Do?

Manufacturing engineers evaluate the process of manufacturing in a company, identify potential improvements, and create and implement solutions. They can work in any industry that makes/manufactures products. Manufacturing engineer duties include:

• Studying existing manufacturing processes and identifying strengths and weaknesses
• Identifying potential improvements in product design and assembly line processes
• Designing new systems for a product, including the design of entire factories
• Creating protocols to improve optimization of the product line, in technical and budgetary aspects
• Designing new products
• Working with design teams to create prototypes
• Working with financial and marketing teams to provide them with information that will affect pricing and advertising decisions
• Assisting with inventory control
• Managing the procurement process for raw materials²https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/careers/what-does-a-manufacturing-engineer-do

Manufacturing Engineer Real Life Analogy:

Let’s say you are participating in the process of setting up the dinner table. The current procedure goes as follows:

1. Go to the kitchen cabinets and take the plates
2. Then go to the dinner table and put the plates where they belong
3. Then go back to the same kitchen cabinets and get the utensils
4. Go back to the dinner table and put the utensils where they belong

In the above example, I notice this took two “passes” (aka trips) since I went from the kitchen cabinets to the dinner table, twice. As a dinner-table-manufacturing engineer, I want to make the process of making the dinner table more efficient. If instead I:

1. Go to the kitchen cabinets and take both the plates AND utensils
2. Then go to the dinner table and put the plates and utensils where they belong.

Manufacturing Engineer Project Examples:

Similarly, let’s look at a more realistic scenario for a manufacturing engineer. If I am manufacturing a portion of the body of a plane, part of this process includes drilling holes in the material so that the pieces of the plane can be put together.

A typical project might be: to reduce the number of passes it takes to complete an entire hole drilling process.

1. The current process takes three passes to drill all the holes on a certain piece of the plane.
2. I will carry out a series of tests to collect data and analysis to demonstrate that I can drill all the holes with a single pass, rather than three.

This effort results in time savings and work-efficiency improvements.

What is the difference between Manufacturing Engineers and Production Engineers?

Manufacturing Engineers focus more on the initial research design, layout, and build of the manufacturing process or system.

Whereas, Production Engineers are more focused on running these systems and would place more emphasis on:

• Meeting production targets, inventory control, operations management, and continuous improvement -a bit more of a business-minded approach-
• The elimination of waste – to make sure money and resources aren’t being wasted
• Quality control and quality assurance – making sure the quality of a product meets expectations³https://info.stonewallco.com/blog/what-is-manufacturing-engineering

What types of Manufacturing Engineer Jobs are out there?

• Materials and Process Engineers
• Design Engineers
• Analysis Engineers (thermal, structural, mass properties)
• Production technicians
• Numerical control programmers
• Tool Engineers
• Industrial Engineers

• Technical skills – Manufacturing engineers need a variety of technical skills, both general and industry-specific. Expertise with computer-simulated modeling programs, such as AutoCAD and SolidWorks, and with mathematical design programs, such as MATLAB, are helpful. Furthermore, they also need to operate and understand the mechanics of the equipment in the factories and plants they work for.
• Lean manufacturing skills – Lean is a type of project management style that many manufacturers use. It involves the ability to reduce waste and increase efficiency.
• Quality assurance skills – Manufacturing engineers must establish procedures that result in the highest quality products.
• Analytical thinking – Good manufacturing engineers have a detail-oriented approach in identifying problems and implementing solutions.
• Organized – Manufacturing engineers simultaneously oversee multiple aspects of a product or facility. Multi-tasking and being organized is essential.
• Communication – Manufacturing engineers work with designers, accountants, vendors and plant operators, technicians, etc. in the process of creating a product. Clearly communicating their expectations with the team is essential.
• Team players – Manufacturing engineers collaborate on teams to launch a product. They should be able to delegate, accept responsibilities and work well with others.
• Financial acumen: As manufacturing engineers focus on making things efficient, they need to understand how they can save money by limiting costs/investing resources appropriately.
• Creativity: A manufacturing engineer uses creative methods to design manufacturing systems/processes for the best possible result while maintaining all regulations and safety standards. ⁴https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/careers/what-does-a-manufacturing-engineer-do

Typical Salary?

Should I become a Manufacturing Engineer?

Some exciting clients that you can be a manufacturing engineer for include (but are not limited to): NASA, Department of Defense, Airlines, and Foreign Governments.