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Learning With Leo: The Disappearing Manufacturing Engineer

Manufacturing engineers are the firefighters of the manufacturing process, but as the industry changes the roles of the manufacturing engineer and manufacturing facilities export their manufacturing offshore, what happens to the function, viability, and knowledge of the manufacturing engineer?

Where design engineering was known as a profession, manufacturing engineering was known as a job, not a career path. Although I was disappointed about that at the time, now I look back and wonder about the truth of that statement.

The design engineers got involved at the conception of the product design all the way to the prototype builds, including creating all the documentation drawing and initial tools. The design engineering group provided the product information to the manufacturing engineers and the production staff, with a schedule to build quantities of these items. But who was writing the process documentation, verifying the correct equipment, training the manufacturing staff on the new documentation, and checking the production process for any bottleneck affecting process flow? These were the functions of the manufacturing engineers. 

However, as outsourcing continued, the overall manufacturing financial costs were minimized, and these functions for the manufacturing engineer began to shift. The job functions were still there, but they were being performed by others.

Since manufacturing engineering is not a glamorous job, the new people were not quite ready to give their all to making sure everything on the manufacturing floor was working smoothly. They felt they had more important things to do, such as design new products, update the existing products, and more.

Now, with reassignment, retirement, and reduction in workforce, the manufacturing engineer is disappearing.

When I visit a manufacturer and subcontractor or talk to the design team, they tell me they miss having a manufacturing engineer perspective in the conversation. Manufacturing engineers typically fell within three disciplines: mechanical, electrical, and industrial, which formed the standard educational foundation for manufacturing and process engineers. That innate tribal knowledge has been lost during this outsourcing process.

It needs to be brought back twofold: first to the subcontractor so they can effectively and efficiently produce the product and next to the customer to properly communicate what has to be done to make their products in an efficient and reliable manner.

To improve the process, however, we need continuing education, as these are not the focus of engineering disciplines at our universities. Manufacturing technology is changing at an exponential rate and engineers need to keep pace with this expansion.

Introducing new products to a manufacturing facility requires the creation of new documents for implementing quality control programs and support process improvements through statistical techniques as part of a commitment to reaching excellence. 

One such continuing education course could be titled “Total Quality Control,” as it uses different charts and experiments to refine the process and quality of the product.

The second course would be “Problem Solving,” as the engineers need to know how to solve problems while using the proper procedures. This discipline would use a team approach, describe the problem, define a plan to solve the issue, identify the root causes, choose the correct solution to solve the issue, implement the corrective action, modify the process to prevent the issue, and finally recognize the team for their achievements. 

The third course is “Design of Experiments,” which includes defining controllable factors with different values to see their effects on the desired results. New engineers must understand the principles of technical writing, the concepts of design for manufacturing in design planning, and the methods for accurately predicting product cost. These programs can then be followed by program management which introduces critical path analysis for program scheduling and tracking. 

Finally, manufacturing engineers must be exposed to the importance of planning and implementing factory automation for future growth.

Let me know your thoughts on this loss of a valuable segment of technical support in the manufacturing world. 

Leo Lambert is the technical director at EPTAC Corporation.