Advice Swap: 4 Career Tips for Manufacturing Engineers

Welcome to Advice Swap, our series for new manufacturing talent and seasoned professionals to exchange advice on career growth, workplace culture and leadership styles. Our goal is to facilitate cohesive working environments among generations.

Throughout this series, IndustryWeek will speak with:

• New manufacturing workers, allowing them to share feedback and what they desire from their workplaces.
• Experienced manufacturers, allowing them to share their tips on building successful careers in the field.

If you fit the description and are interested in sharing your thoughts, we’d love to hear from you! Submit your response here.

Brad DeSplinter grew up surrounded by manufacturing in Moline, Illinois, the home of John Deere’s world headquarters, and many of his friends’ parents worked at one of the nearby factories. As a child, he excelled at math and science, prompting those around him to encourage a career in engineering, which he says eventually became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I’m a huge believer in manufacturing; I’m a believer in making things; I’m a believer in going out and touching things with your hands and being able to figure out, ‘How do I make something better? Faster? How do I do something that’s going to give a customer better value overall?’” he says.

In college, DeSplinter gained experience through an engineering co-op for aerospace and industrial products manufacturer Sundstrand, and after graduation began his career as an engineer at Frito-Lay.

After working his way through several other companies as a manufacturing engineer, product engineer and engineering manager, DeSplinter landed at Texas Precision Metalcraft, an investment casting foundry in Sugar Land, Texas, in 2006.

For engineers just starting their manufacturing journey, DeSplinter shared the following advice on the importance of interacting with coworkers; keeping an ambitious, positive mindset; and building a successful career.

1. Develop Your Communication Skills

When he began working in manufacturing, DeSplinter soon realized that communication skills were more important to career advancement than he’d anticipated.

“Being able to communicate different things and think on your feet, I think that’s still going to be a key part of manufacturing going forward,” he says. “I don’t think it’s going to be a bunch of people sitting around and working drones and computers from a joystick. I think there’s still going to be that human interaction.”

Getting comfortable speaking with others will help you learn and gain trust among your coworkers and with customers, he says.

“Go out and talk with the people that are actually doing the work on the shop floor. Try to do some of the things that are being done,” he says. “Your street cred is going to go up 1,000 times if you go out and somebody’s working on something, say, ‘I don’t understand. Let me try that.’”

DeSplinter suggests asking questions like, “When you first started, how was this done?” and “What was something that you had to overcome when you were new with this job?”

“People like to talk about themselves and like to tell their stories and their experiences, so ask,” he says.

Developing communication skills doesn’t just have to take place within your company. Making connections externally through industry groups and clubs will not only look good on a resume, he says, but also give you opportunities to practice speaking with others and improve your self-promotional skills, which will be key in advancing your career.

2. Seek Out a Mentor

Learning about your colleagues might also help you find a mentor, something DeSplinter wishes he’d had when he began his career.

“Back when I got involved, having a mentor was something nobody ever talked about,” he says. “I was probably working for 10 years before I even heard the word mentor or even knew what it meant.”

With mentorships much more prevalent today, DeSplinter advises new workers to actively seek out a leader they respect to help them navigate the culture of the organization and serve as a sounding board in difficult or unfamiliar situations.

3. Never Stop Learning

Self-ambition should be a crucial part of your career, DeSplinter says, and a core aspect of that is to take ownership of your own learning.

To see your work as a career as opposed to just a job, DeSplinter recommends a quick exercise to help you gain a better sense of awareness and be mindful of continuous improvement.

“Walk out in the middle of the work area, figuratively rather than literally, cover your eyes for five seconds and then open your eyes,” he says. “Look and see what you see, and say, ‘Does what I’m seeing make sense?’ and ‘What could I do to make it better?’”

DeSplinter uses a professional football analogy to emphasize the importance of understanding the bigger picture at your company.

“They don’t just go out and play on game day … the left tackle knows exactly what the guard in the center and the guys on the other side of the line are going to do. They know where the running back is going to go on every play,” he says. “They don’t just understand my job and ‘I’m just going to do what I have to do.’ You need to go out there and you need to understand what everybody has to do.”

Continuous learning may also require you to step outside your comfort zone.

“Don’t stay in your lane. Get the heck out of your lane. Learn all of the different things that go on; see what else is happening. Because you may find that you have a great affinity for something that’s outside of your lane,” he says.

4. Begin Every Day With an Open Mind and Fresh Outlook

DeSplinter highlights the excitement of manufacturing, with every day “a brand-new adventure” and a chance to learn and grow.

“There’s going to be an opportunity to learn a new skill,” he says. “There’s going to be a problem that happens with a partner, with a process. And you’re going to have that opportunity to go out and learn more about that and learn how to fix that … and then the next day there’s going to be something brand new, totally different that’s going to happen.”

DeSplinter says new manufacturing workers have much to look forward to and take pride in.

“At the end of the day, there’s almost always going to be some tangible thing that you’ve made and you’ve done, and you can say, ‘I made that.’ And there’s something exciting about that.”