What Jobs Do Engineers in Manufacturing Industries Do?
Engineering is a job with many applications. Manufacturing businesses are often in the market for recruiting good-quality engineering graduates, often in competition with one another. If you are considering a job in manufacturing from an engineering point of view, then what sort of functions will you be expected to carry out on a daily basis?
Machine Maintenance
The manufacturing industry relies on product-line techniques these days more than ever. Of course, many manufacturers have invested heavily in machinery and even robots to keep their production lines running efficiently. When these machines break down, it can cost thousands of dollars in lost production time. Therefore, machine maintenance is one of the main jobs that engineers are expected to do in manufacturing facilities. This sometimes requires taking machines offline for a time to repair them, but it usually means checking them within a preventative maintenance regime to spot problems before they lead to stoppages. Manufacturing engineers are commonly responsible for organising their preventative maintenance schedules themselves.
System and Process Design
Engineers with an inventive eye will be attracted to manufacturers who like to innovate their operations, perhaps developing entirely new products for the market. In such cases, you may need to design new systems and even manufacture machinery to cope with the innovations coming out of the research and development department. Of course, no new system will work in a modern manufacturing facility without a process that goes behind it that everyone working at the factory can understand and be able to use. It is usually a manufacturing engineer who will design such processes.
Supervision of Technical Staff
Many manufacturing companies employ technically able operatives to carry out certain job functions on a production line who are not fully trained engineers. It is common for a manufacturing engineer to oversee the work of such technical staff to ensure a consistent level of quality is maintained. This may involve training and redeploying staff where necessary.
Fault Inspections
Returned items that are suspected of being faulty will often need to be inspected by an in-house manufacturing engineer for an assessment. Like machine maintenance, this means being able to problem solve and to think 'outside of the box' because the root cause of the problem may not be immediately obvious. Where a problem is identified, the engineering team is usually responsible for adjusting the manufacturing procedures and systems to ensure such faults are not replicated in future.