Production Pulse: Why Did You Choose Manufacturing for a Career?

Oct. 26, 2023
IndustryWeek editors joined engineers and managers to wrap on Manufacturing Month by talking to professionals about why they chose to spend their careers in industry.

With October's Manufacturing Month nearing its close, IndustryWeek invited people who participated in a recent survey about why they chose careers in manufacturing to share their stories. 

Larry Gates, a process engineering manager for Fortune Brands' Fiberon division, talked about moving from design to the shop floor where he felt he could be more creative. Salvador Martinez joined us from Costa Rica where he's been a process engineer for 40 years, most recently as a freelance consultant. 

Both had participated in a single-question survey that simply asked why people chose careers in this industry. While many people talked about the desire to work with their hands or family connections to the manufacturing world, other responses focused on the ability to find creative solutions to problems. One of the most frequent answers was the sense of job satisfaction that manufacturers gain from seeing a finished product and knowing that they contributed to making it -- something that's a little less obvious in many fields. 


For those of you who prefer to listen to these conversations instead of watching the video, please enjoy the podcast version of this conversation.

About the Author

Robert Schoenberger

Editor-in-Chief

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/robert-schoenberger-4326b810

Bio: Robert Schoenberger has been writing about manufacturing technology in one form or another since the late 1990s. He began his career in newspapers in South Texas and has worked for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi; The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky; and The Plain Dealer in Cleveland where he spent more than six years as the automotive reporter. In 2014, he launched Today's Motor Vehicles (now EV Manufacturing & Design), a magazine focusing on design and manufacturing topics within the automotive and commercial truck worlds. He joined IndustryWeek in late 2021.

About the Author

Laura Putre | Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

I work with IndustryWeek's contributors and report on leadership and the automotive industry as they relate to manufacturing. Got a story idea? Reach out to me at [email protected]

 

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