Role of Manufacturing Engineers

I would class myself as a manufacturing engineer, although you don't specify what area of manufacturing. I have been involved in product design, but now I'm more involved in process design, production problem solving, factory layout planning plus all those little downside activities like time and motion studies, risk assessments, health and safety and environmental issues. My days are quite busy! As you can see from this, engineering is just the beginning. I hope this is of some help.

I've been a manufacturing engineer for almost 20 years and I'd say everything that PlbMak said it true. But when I talk with non-engineers and they want to know what a manufacturing engineer does, I most often answer like this. A design engineer thinks up stuff and proves it on paper. My job is to figure out how to make it happen. I'm expected to know how to make anything. And over my career I've found that if you give a room full of manufacturing engineers a bucket of money, there is NOTHING they can't make happen.

Exactly right! Except for the bucket of money..................

Dear najeeb, you may not require combinational backgrounds but you must need creativity that is design the product and merging to latest technologies , this is somewhat like reverse engg. if a engineer is better well known and be updated of latest technology, surely we can gothrough a head.

Everything said in the prior posts is absolutely correct. Your actual degree would most likely have been in engineering - more specifically either mechanical, chemical, or industrial, or electrical and depends, as mentioned above, on the industry or manufacturer you work for.

I am fortunate to be in a position at a small company that allows me to both design and build my creations.

As stated above, the manufacturing engineer is usually the one who needs to make designs or ideas work and be "manufacturable". They are typically 20% Einstein, and 80% McGyver. In other words, you need your "book smarts" but also need the creativity and moreover the practicality to make it all work.

The fact of the matter is that things that look great on paper or on a computer will not always work in the real world. Here's an example I like to use: a scientist or researcher can devise a way to make something work once or twice out of fifty trials on a seemingly limitless budget, unlimited time, and with any type of equipment available to the human race. It is the manufacturing engineer's job to take this information and get the same end result with 3% or less scrap using readily available, inexpensive equipment (our version of "legos"). We need to do this on a limited budget (because we still need to sell our product for a profit) and we need to make the product very quickly with minimal labor so we both deliver product in a reasonable amount of time and it doesn't cost the company too much in overhead.

Manufacturing engineers need to have good people-skills. Your machine operators need direction from you as creating procedures and processes for manufacturing is a huge part of the job. Treat them with respect and they will be your greatest asset. Depending on the company, the manufacturing engineer will often interact directly with the customer's salesmen, engineers, and/or owners. The best way to give the customer what they want is to ask them what they want.

The manufacturing engineer (yes, I may be tooting my own horn) is the modern-day Renaissance man. You may major in one field but you will need to have at least a cursory knowledge of several other fields. Your day is very busy but it's rarely the same day after day. You wear several hats which not only makes the job interesting but helps you to be marketable in an ever-increasingly competitive job market.

I was and still am at 77 a manufacturing engineer. I have taught in community college full time, I have been a Human relations/personnel manager for 8 yrs starting upa 525 personnel mfg plant, I have been on the road teaching operation of highly technical machinery operation in the auto industry, I am now selling a product that I patented.

So all in all a mfg engr is a jack of all trades with a general knowledge of science principles and the desire to accomplish the impossible.

I am new to this forum so I may be a bit late to comment here but here goes anyway. I have 34 years in manufacturing. If you want more detals than that they are available on my website. I have mixed feelings about engineering degrees. I don't have one but by my experince consider myself an manufacturing engineer. Not having the degree has cost me dearly in terms of income so I certainly recognize the value or the cost as the case may be. However my respect for the degree is on a person by person basis. I have been privileged during my carreer to work with some brilliant engineers. I have also been very dissapionted with some who hold a degree. I have worked with mechanical and manufacturing engineers with bachelor and masters degrees that didn't know aluminum from sst. Many get out of school and get jobs doing design work and they know almost nothing about dimensioning and tolerencing, manufacturing processes, or materials. I am told they are expected to learn this stuff on the job. Someone has to teach them and that costs, especially when a company has to pay for them to learn by their mistakes. It is also amazing to me how many can't communicate using things like complete sentences, grammar, and spelling. In fact there are many examples of such on this website. Education plus experiece, plus talent makes a real engineer.

It can be a very interesting and exciting carreer. Good luck.