Explore jobs
Find specific jobs
Explore careers
Explore professions
Best companies
Explore companies
If you work for an organization that creates or manufacturers its product, then you likely already have employed or are looking to employ a manufacturing engineer. Manufacturing engineers are the individuals who design and operate the manufacturing systems in place for any product.
These engineers are responsible for identifying, choosing, and implementing the best technologies and processes to manufacture, plan, and design the factory that will produce the product. They’ll oversee the maintenance, overall operations, and continuous improvement of the manufacturing process.
Manufacturing engineers may be responsible for additional things outside of these immediate responsibilities including quality control, inventory control, material flow, cost analysis, procurement, and supply chain management, among other things.
This branch of engineering is specifically focused on understanding, analyzing, and improving complex industrial, manufacturing, or infrastructure systems. Their primary goal is to find and use the equipment necessary to turn raw materials into a finished product, in the most efficient way possible.
Manufacturing engineers are paid well, with the median annual wage at just over $88,000 annual as of 2019. This industry is also expected to see impressive job growth of at least 10% between 2016 and 2026.
Looking for a job? These position are hiring now near you:
As mentioned above, manufacturing engineers are responsible for overseeing manufacturing and ensuring it’s completed with a quality end product in both a time and cost-efficient manner.
If a business is just starting out, they may be tasked with figuring out the initial manufacturing process. This includes the process steps, design and layout of the production lines, the machinery, individual workstations, and an overall operational plan to ensure production is both understood and managed efficiently.
Manufacturing setups will vary widely by product, company, and industry. Manufacturing engineers are most likely to work with monitoring equipment and look for improvement opportunities within the existing process. These individuals help companies increase their productivity while ensuring the final delivery of a quality product.
Some responsibilities of a manufacturing engineer could be:
Automation. Manufacturing engineers must be responsible for figuring out how to automate any type of manufacturing facility through the use of robotics, computer technology, or a flexible manufacturing system.
Design. Manufacturing engineers might be tasked with designing processes as well as the tools or equipment to manufacture a product if none exist.
Optimization. Manufacturing engineers will typically be responsible for figuring out the optimal layout for machines, equipment, and handlers for an optimal manufacturing process.
Savings. The biggest benefit to hiring a manufacturing engineer is to ensure the most cost-effective material handling and facilities for your company. This should be a large focus for this individual when making decisions.
For those looking to take a role in manufacturing engineering, you’ll want to be sure you have the necessary skills to be effective. This includes analytical, lean manufacturing, QA, communication, technical, problem solving, decision making, and organizational skills.
Now that we understand what manufacturing engineering is and what these individuals do, we’ll want to think through some of the important questions to ask candidates.
Below are five interview questions and example answers that are appropriate for an interview with a manufacturing engineer.
Can you describe a typical workday for you as a manufacturing engineer? Manufacturing engineers come with different types of backgrounds, experience levels, and skills. This is a great question to ask early in the interview to get the candidate talking.
For the most part, this question is intended to get a good idea of personality and communication skills, while opening up some additional areas to discuss later in the areas. Responding to this question will depend on what specific skills you want to highlight as well as any processes you think they may find valuable.
Example Answer:
“Typically, my day starts with a morning meeting with my production management team to discuss any issues that may have arisen in the past day. Once I’m aware of any issues, I work to address them first, either on my own or by discussing them with one of my team members. Then, I’ll take a quick tour of the plant for a brief inspection and spend some time with our employees to see how they’re doing with our current processes.
“Once that’s done, I usually work on new designs or improvements in our processes or our equipment. Depending on the day, I’ll also have meetings with management or vendors, and do some light administrative duties.”
Can you give me an example of a time a process change you made improved product quality? How did you track the change back to the process you implemented? Manufacturing engineers should spend a good amount of their time looking for ways to improve processes, especially if quality issues arise or they are given consistent negative feedback on an existing process.
This question will prompt the candidate to use creative thinking and show the interviewer how important they believe process improvements to be. This will also shed a light on how much experience the candidate has as it pertains to process changes.
They should be able to communicate their experience succinctly and provide technical details.
Example Answer:
“At my previous job, we were working with older machinery and kept experiencing issues with stripped bolts on the assembly line. After an analysis, I prompted the company to switch to a different power tool that could decrease the defects we were experiencing as well as increase the speed of our assembly line.”
Let’s say you’re inspecting your production line and notice a safety feature that has been disabled. What do you do? Manufacturing engineers are responsible for inspecting their teams and production lines. Sometimes organizations and teams prioritize production over safety, making it easy to disable certain features on the line.
However, a manufacturing engineer is responsible for enforcing safety policies that are in place. This could require stopping production or having a difficult conversation with a supervisor or individual employee.
This is an important responsibility as it doesn’t just show what the individual finds important, but how they might handle a disobedient employee.
Example Answer:
“This has happened in previous jobs of mine when overseeing the production line with automated equipment. Typically, I simply ask the individual to correct the safety measure or make it clear to the line supervisor that it must be fixed as soon as possible.”
Walk me through how you calculate the cost of manufacturing work that may still be in progress. This technical question addresses engineering skills and the ability to understand how much a manufacturing process can cost and how the company thinks about this cost.
Experienced manufacturing engineers should be able to answer this question with no problem, so depending on the experience level you’re looking for, this could be a great question to ask. It’ll also show how the candidate responds to questions that are outside of their comfort zones.
Example Answer:
“When I have manufacturing work in progress, I consider a few different things when accounting for the costs of work. This includes raw material and labor which are both direct costs. It will also include factory overhead as well as other indirect costs. Using both direct and indirect costs can help calculate the cost of manufacturing work that’s still in progress.”
Tell me how you would handle a product that has consistent quality problems that occasionally reach the customer. Part of the manufacturing engineer’s responsibilities is to design a process of product manufacturing that’s as cost-effective as possible. However, the product still needs to meet the customer’s needs.
Your candidate should show that they understand corrective action procedures that can address any customer complaints as well as how they’d investigate what the issue is on the assembly line. Problems could be anything from human error to unsuitable machines.
Example Answer:
“Situations like this typically arise when we’re not listening to customer feedback or complaints. After identifying the source of the issue, I would put into practice corrective actions that will help correct the issue at hand and prevent future problems at the start, rather than at the end of the process.”
The questions above are just a sample of questions that candidates may receive during their interview. However, there may be other questions you want to ask to get a better idea of certain skills or abilities your candidate might have.
What interests you specifically about manufacturing engineering?
What are your salary expectations?
Describe a conflict you had with one of your colleagues and how you resolved it.
Describe a situation where you faced something challenging in your personal life. How did that affect your commitment to work?
Describe a situation where you were proud of achieving a goal and how you achieved it.
Tell me about a time you used logic to solve an issue.
Can you define the term BOM and how it’s used in manufacturing?
Are you familiar with Kanban?
Can you explain what MES is and how it is used in manufacturing?
Have you been Six Sigma certified?