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, and maintaining production fixtures and equipment.
• Using lean manufacturing principles to develop new processes and improve existing ones; helping to prevent quality issues and reduce costs.
• Collaborating on new product design to help ensure that it can be more easily and efficiently manufactured.

What does my typical day look like?

First things first, I check my emails and review any engineering change orders that may require action from me. I am responsible for several cells. I walk the floor to ensure that all cells are operating without issue, and I finish an inventory of all the parts for our new acquisition. I document the assembly and packaging procedure for the products to be produced in the new cell.

I then train an operator on the assembly and packaging processes according to the SOPs I created. I also perform a time study of several new products to determine how long a completed assembly takes to build. From there, I determine how many operators would be needed on the line to meet customer demand. I train another operator on how to calibrate customer units against NIST references and create a report of the data.

I attend a manufacturing team meeting to report the status of the product lines that I am responsible for and to learn how the other product lines were performing as well. I attend a second meeting to discuss how the new PMA unit’s board design will affect testing and assembly. We prioritize team communication and are always focused on getting the best end result.

I also create CAD models and drawings of several parts that are either machined or laser cut in-house in order to outsource them and decrease demand on in-house resources.

My day heavily involves tackling and solving problems as they come my way. For instance, a product began failing leak testing. The fact that all units were failing led me to believe that the testing equipment was at fault. I recalibrated the tester and used our reference unit to verify the accuracy of the calibration. Additionally, a recent lot of cases were received out of spec. There are multiple SKUs of this product, so it did not shut down the line, but it would possibly delay a number of customer orders. This required me to contact the vendor to implement corrective actions and give me an eta on when the correct parts would be received. I confirmed that the vendor identified the issue and that the correct parts would be overnighted to us and we would still be able to ship to customers on time.

Pros

• Being able to collaborate daily with other engineers of various disciplines and experience. Invaluable in gaining practical engineering knowledge.
• I like to solve problems, and there is never a shortage of manufacturing problems to solve or process improvements that can be made.
• It’s very rewarding to conceptualize a new product, fixture, or piece of equipment, and have the tools and knowledge to actually design and build it.
• Salary is generally good.

Cons

• Not always a 9 to 5 job. Certain assignments may require extra-long workdays, working on weekends, as well as taking work home with you to ensure it is completed on time.
• The workload at times can be overwhelming. There are often multiple assignments or unexpected problems that will constantly compete for your attention.