How To Become A Manufacturing Consultant: What It Is and Career Path

What is a manufacturing consultant and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted expert

Guiping Hu Ph.D.

Manufacturing consultants assist companies in improving the quality of their products. A manufacturing consultant oversees the optimization of system efficiency and assists in the creation of the needed infrastructure for manufacturing processes.

During the production phase, your work may involve providing long-term solutions to problems to improve production processes and yield positive results. This may include the identification of raw materials for production and ensuring the manufacturing process progresses as planned. You may also work with workers to ensure that they effectively work to meet manufacturing standards.

As a manufacturing consultant, you will need a bachelor's degree in Engineering, systems or industrial engineering, and a similar field. A bit of experience in the manufacturing field is also necessary. You also need strong interpersonal skills with the ability to work and communicate efficiently with different people in an organization. A manufacturing consultant earns an average of $45 per hour or up to $94,474 per year.

What general advice would you give to a manufacturing consultant?

Guiping Hu Ph.D.

Professor and Department Head, Oklahoma State University

People like the diversity and flexibility of being an industrial engineer. You can work on all kinds of problems with your industrial engineering skills. However, if you are only looking for a very narrow area in a specific engineering discipline, industrial engineering may not be right for you since we focus on system efficiency improvement and welfare of the workers.

ScoreManufacturing ConsultantUS Average

Salary

6.8

Avg. Salary $86,698

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.5

Growth rate 10%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

6.7

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.17%

Asian 11.61%

Black or African American 4.75%

Hispanic or Latino 11.68%

Unknown 3.95%

White 67.84%

Gender

female 10.94%

male 89.06%

Age - 41

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 41

Stress level

7.5

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.3

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

5.1

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a manufacturing consultant

Explore manufacturing consultant education requirements

Most common manufacturing consultant degrees

Bachelor's

68.4 %

Master's

14.9 %

Associate

11.9 %

Start to develop specific manufacturing consultant skills

Skills	Percentages
Business Process	17.42%
Enterprise Resource Planning	12.80%
Gap Analysis	12.79%
Lean Manufacturing	5.95%
ERP	4.57%

Complete relevant manufacturing consultant training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New manufacturing consultants learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a manufacturing consultant based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real manufacturing consultant resumes.

Research manufacturing consultant duties and responsibilities

Finish goods are managed visually with the use of buffers and kanban cards instead of through a planning department.
Manage materials and logistics with both customers and supply base to support revenue generation and product diversification strategies.
Use process flow mapping for all functions of the business to determine key metrics for individual Kaizen events.
Implement and maintain MRP system.

Prepare your manufacturing consultant resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your manufacturing consultant resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a manufacturing consultant resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable manufacturing consultant resume templates

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