Manufacturing Engineers: Salary, Job Description, How To Become One, and Quiz

Job description

Manufacturing Engineers design, integrate, or improve manufacturing systems or related processes. May work with commercial or industrial designers to refine product designs to increase producibility and decrease costs.

• Troubleshoot new or existing product problems involving designs, materials, or processes.
• Investigate or resolve operational problems, such as material use variances or bottlenecks.
• Identify opportunities or implement changes to improve manufacturing processes or products or to reduce costs, using knowledge of fabrication processes, tooling and production equipment, assembly methods, quality control standards, or product design, materials and parts.
• Apply continuous improvement methods such as lean manufacturing to enhance manufacturing quality, reliability, or cost-effectiveness.

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Salary

Manufacturing Engineers with little to no experience tend to make between $50750 and $69890 while the more experienced ones can earn over $126200 per year.

One of the easiest ways to increase your salary as a Manufacturing Engineer is to move to a higher paying state like DC. Right now, the highest paying states for Manufacturing Engineers are DC, MD, VA, AL and NJ.

However, a higher pay at DC doesn’t guarantee that you will make more because the living expenses at DC might be twice as high than where you are currently at now.

Three other factors that can increase your salary as a Manufacturing Engineer is the degree you hold, the industry you work in, and lastly the company you work for.

Requirements

We asked other Manufacturing Engineers what degree they had when they got the job and most of them said they had a Bachelor’s Degree followed by an Associate’s Degree.

Other than that, we also asked them what did they major in and here are the most popular majors that came up.

Pros and Cons

Here are some of the pros and cons of being a Manufacturing Engineer.

What is the job like

70% of Manufacturing Engineers said they were satisfied with their job and 60% said they feel like their job is making other people’s lives better.

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Fin Brown

Get It Made

There are two distinct roles of a Manufacturing Engineer and typically a Manufacturing Engineer would only focus on one of these roles. Firstly there is Manufacturing Engineering Design. This focuses on how parts and products can be better designed to suit a particular manufacturing process. Often the key requirements are reducing cost, improving quality. This … Read More

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Sherry Morgan

Manufacturing Engineers are the ones who operate the design software to produce product and system designs, We also evaluate the production methods used for every item and supervise every process to ensure the quality of all the final products. There are many tasks that are assigned for a Manufacturing Engineer, As for me, I am … Read More

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Hasan Jackson

Nielsen-Kellerman

I am from Nielsen-Kellerman, an award-winning designer and manufacturer of weather stations, ballistics and weather instruments, and sports performance products. A typical day for me involves supporting the manufacturing staff; ensuring that they have the tools, equipment, and training necessary to produce products to meet customer demand. Some of my key responsibilities include: Designing, building, … Read More

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Is this right for me

You can read more about these career personality types here.

People who are suitable for this job tends to like work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They like working with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and machinery..

They also like working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. They like searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.

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