Working in manufacturing engineering these past few weeks has definitely put me outside of my comfort zone. The medical technology discussed at work is all familiar, but the jargon and approach to solving manufacturing problems still seems a bit foreign to me, especially given my background primarily in design and product development.
Design tends to allow for greater trial and error, with more flexibility in considering “radical” solutions (within reasonable design constraints, of course). Learning how to design tests and brainstorm solutions in manufacturing has proved to be quite different. Manufacturing is first constrained by the product design specifications. Manufacturing engineers take the designs provided by product developers for fact, acting as their overall constraints. Beyond that, when solving a problem in manufacturing, engineers must consider how it will affect the manufacturing process and production. If a test is done on a manufacturing process without considering potential failures or taking the necessary precautions, an entire product assembly line could go down, costing a company large sums of money. Yet, despite the constrains present in manufacturing engineering, a great deal of freedom still exists in the design of tests to improve a production process.
After discussing my new project with various engineers this past week, I realized that I do have some creative freedom when it comes to the tests I develop for optimizing manufacturing processes. The tests I develop cannot be too radical, but there is room to think outside the box and do something that isn’t the “norm” for testing manufacturing processes. Designing tests under constraints and guidelines I’m not quite familiar with will be a challenge that tests my ability to problem solve in a new environment, and hopefully further expand the boundaries of my engineering skills and working comfort zone.