Pivoting from Process Improvement Lead to Engineering – Seeking Career Advice

Hi,

To give some perspective to my answer, before I moved into consultancy I ran, for many years, a team covering process improvement, manufacturing, and design engineering. So this is a question I had quite a lot of experience of during annual appraisals with my staff!

The basic answer is that the line between process improvement and manufacturing engineering can be very narrow, dependent on your technical background - which I guess is your question. It would be useful if you could say what technical qualifications and experience you currently have, if any (in fact it's very difficult to advise without knowing that).

But fundamentally the way I've seen people move between these roles - and did myself in my early career - is simply: show an interest. When you identify a process improvement that requires a technical change make sure that you involve yourself in it. This may be initially by working with the engineering team to ensure that their technical decisions meet your required intention, but while you are doing this listen, learn, and start contributing suggestions. You should find out quite quickly where you don't have sufficient technical knowledge, and that will help you target what you need to learn for your specific industry and company.

Do NOT get a new qualification and then say to the engineering team "I now have this qualification, you must let me in" - that just annoys people! The fact is that most engineering skills are learned through experience, supported by targeted knowledge, and it sounds as if you should be in a really good position to get that experience by working closely with the engineering teams and building yourself a reputation (through being helpful and listening and learning) where they start trusting you to make larger and larger engineering decisions.

Try to spot process improvement projects which require a small technical change, and try to work out how to do it yourself - then quietly propose this change to a friendly engineer on the change team. They may say your change is impractical as it is, but if you approach this correctly they may well work with you to make it a practical change. And a good engineer will make sure that you get some of the credit for it, which will make others keen to work with you in a similar way. 

And following from that thought, a lot of opportunities do come through personal relationships with the area you want to move into. Of course be careful not to be the person who is "not doing their own job, they're always asking questions about other people's". Instead make the conversations about how you can help the engineers with the application of their work and in turn you pick up some of the skills and understanding of their work. And then one day you have a chance of finding yourself in the position where a big change project comes up and someone says "we need Emmanuel on the team, they're interested and helpful and will do a good job".

Hope that helps, but as above do tell us a bit more about what technical knowledge and skills you already have. It's a really useful discussion to have on here as there will be many others in a similar position.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi,

To give some perspective to my answer, before I moved into consultancy I ran, for many years, a team covering process improvement, manufacturing, and design engineering. So this is a question I had quite a lot of experience of during annual appraisals with my staff!

The basic answer is that the line between process improvement and manufacturing engineering can be very narrow, dependent on your technical background - which I guess is your question. It would be useful if you could say what technical qualifications and experience you currently have, if any (in fact it's very difficult to advise without knowing that).

But fundamentally the way I've seen people move between these roles - and did myself in my early career - is simply: show an interest. When you identify a process improvement that requires a technical change make sure that you involve yourself in it. This may be initially by working with the engineering team to ensure that their technical decisions meet your required intention, but while you are doing this listen, learn, and start contributing suggestions. You should find out quite quickly where you don't have sufficient technical knowledge, and that will help you target what you need to learn for your specific industry and company.

Do NOT get a new qualification and then say to the engineering team "I now have this qualification, you must let me in" - that just annoys people! The fact is that most engineering skills are learned through experience, supported by targeted knowledge, and it sounds as if you should be in a really good position to get that experience by working closely with the engineering teams and building yourself a reputation (through being helpful and listening and learning) where they start trusting you to make larger and larger engineering decisions.

Try to spot process improvement projects which require a small technical change, and try to work out how to do it yourself - then quietly propose this change to a friendly engineer on the change team. They may say your change is impractical as it is, but if you approach this correctly they may well work with you to make it a practical change. And a good engineer will make sure that you get some of the credit for it, which will make others keen to work with you in a similar way. 

And following from that thought, a lot of opportunities do come through personal relationships with the area you want to move into. Of course be careful not to be the person who is "not doing their own job, they're always asking questions about other people's". Instead make the conversations about how you can help the engineers with the application of their work and in turn you pick up some of the skills and understanding of their work. And then one day you have a chance of finding yourself in the position where a big change project comes up and someone says "we need Emmanuel on the team, they're interested and helpful and will do a good job".

Hope that helps, but as above do tell us a bit more about what technical knowledge and skills you already have. It's a really useful discussion to have on here as there will be many others in a similar position.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi Andy,

Thanks for such a detailed response – that really helps put things into perspective.

By way of background, I studied MEng Mechanical Engineering at Nottingham Trent University, where I built up experience in design engineering, manufacturing processes and system optimisation. I’m now working in process improvement in food manufacturing, mainly focused on reducing downtime and improving line efficiency. What I enjoy most is when improvements require technical changes – it’s where I get to use my engineering background and learn from the manufacturing team.

Your point about building trust by contributing and learning really resonates. I’m aiming to get more involved in small technical changes and grow from there, so your advice on how to approach that is spot on.

Appreciate the guidance!

Best,
Emmanuel