By Ashley Fox, Senior Consultant, IMIG
As a manufacturing engineer by trade, I knew there would be gaps in my experience when stepping into a new role working alongside other manufacturing consultants. However, the tools and approaches I developed over the past decade as an engineer have provided an invaluable foundation for thriving in the world of manufacturing consulting.
Inquisitiveness: The Core Trait of Engineers as Manufacturing Consultants
Of course, everyone thinks that their approach is best and has confirmation bias with regards to their own experience, but I believe that there is a unique mix of invaluable traits that a manufacturing engineering background provides compared to other disciplines. The first of which is a key trait I look for in all manufacturing or production engineers, is inquisitiveness. Whilst all engineers are, by nature, curious, I believe that manufacturing engineers have self-selected themselves because of their desire to figure out how things work and then how to fix or improve them. This also forms the underlying foundation of my approach to consulting.
Transitioning from Engineers to Manufacturing Consultants: The Roles
As a consultant with IMIG, I get involved in different types of projects and take on different roles. Although a project is always unique, and there is more nuance than what’s listed below, it can essentially be broken down into three main types:
- Turnaround and supplier management/escalation.
- Project management, such as NPI, a plant or facility move, conducting due diligence on a merger or acquisition.
- Business improvement, leading strategic workshops, lean coaching, or interim roles.
Identify Root Causes
Often in a turnaround or supplier escalation, the underlying root cause of a problem will not have been identified, and the existing team is fully occupied dealing with the symptoms and trying to keep the business’s head above water. They may even have been dealing with the problem for so long that they no longer see the issue, like a frog in a slowly boiled pot.
In these situations, the problem first needs to be properly understood and quantified. A set of metrics or KPIs need to be established to identify the scale of the problem since, as the adage says “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”. This can be met with resistance from people under pressure and can be seen as a consultant just adding more work to the busiest people just to try and justify their position. This is where a manufacturing engineer’s problem-solving tools and manufacting consultants leadership mindset combine best, using facts and persuasion to influence the attitude and behaviours of other people.
Enhancing Operations
As one of the main roles of a manufacturing engineer is to increase the efficiency of an assembly line and these situations are where the roles have been most closely aligned. The requirement to improve any element of Quality, Cost, Delivery (in my experience usually the latter), is one where the application of waste reduction through time and motion studies, process optimisation and standardisation, layout improvements, manpower planning, tooling reviews, optimising inventory levels, designing in-process checks, and creating maintenance plans will drive improvements in the QCD triangle.
Identifying & Removing Waste in Business Processes
It’s not just operational problems that manufacturing engineers can address; waste can be identified in any business process. Since the problems are different, the methods of identification, root cause, and mitigation activities are different as well. This is part of developing the consultant’s toolbox and having the experience of my fellow consultants to fall back on, but the thought processes, controls, and tracking of those risks follows a similar methodology. This can involve identifying blockages or single points of failure for a business such as machinery, people, knowledge, or identifying bottlenecks in systems that are preventing or delaying necessary changes from being made. This has been a great opportunity to experience wider elements of organisations and continue to learn and develop.
Risk Management
Successful project management often comes down to developing detailed plans, controlling risk, and ensuring enough resources have been provided for the relevant stakeholders to achieve it. In manufacturing, risk assessment is done through virtual builds, supporting or leading DFMEA or PFMEA activities, and supporting with the creation of control plans and risk assessments for a production line or product. As manufacturing consultants, this is mirrored, but regarding a whole project, business, or even an industry. Fundamental skills are essential when there’s less structured assessments of risk, and it’s usually one of the first things that you’ll undertake when starting any new project. Good manufacturing engineers are confident communicators, can handle timelines and deliverables effectively, and can accurately work through operational and capital costs to keep track of budgets. For instance, it may be necessary to value work-in-progress at different stages of value add, to ensure warehouse stock isn’t obsolete, or to inventory the tooling or machinery required for an end-to-end manufacturing process and highlight where capacity constraints or a single machine failure would lead to a loss of production.
Strategic Support and Leadership Augmentation
The final sector to discuss is what many people think of as more traditional manufacturing consultants and it’s is more directly related to my previous experience managing and leading teams, both in business and in the military. We are often brought in to support or augment the existing leadership team of a business to help identify and/or implement business strategy. These can be short-term in the form of leading strategic workshops, medium-term by helping to develop and monitor plans, supporting the leadership team, or longer-term by stepping into interim roles or long-term coaching and support of the executive team.
A Unique Insight
Although there is a less tangible link for a manufacturing engineer between this element and the others, there are however a range of interim roles that manufacturing engineers are suitable for, spanning anything from engineering, operations, plant quality, or logistics. By analysing where the business is, where it wants to be, how to get there, assessing the risks, and creating a risk mitigation/control plan, objectives can be set and measured against. It can also be helpful for the senior leadership to have the support of someone independent with the ability to dissect operations and manufacturing issues and provide confidence by validating progress and confirming figures are correct.
The Next Steps
In summary, obviously, these skills don’t translate to create a one-size-fits-all consultant; there’s no overlap with selling or marketing. However, it shows the key skills that manufacturing engineers can provide to support operations and leadership teams for a manufacturing business. They can repurpose skills they’ve developed and deploy them elsewhere in the business, using their unique insight into process optimisation to drive improvements across an organisation.
Personally, since I took on the role of consultant, I’ve experienced a wide array of different manufacturing methods to practise my skills and continued to hone my leadership skills, influence and authority. I’ve also worked closely with and experienced greater exposure to the overarching role that finance plays in businesses and have started formal training with CIMA to qualify as a management accountant.
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