Comment on What do office workers actually do?
markovs_gun@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m a chemical engineer at a plastics company. When I’m in the office I’m looking at data and making decisions based on that, like whether to stop or increase production rates, whether to shut something down for maintenance, or finding what piece of equipment is broken and causing a problem. I also design improvements to the process like finding better ways to run the machinery, new equipment that gets us more capacity, or new ways to control the equipment. I would say about 80% of my time is in the office and 20% is in the manufacturing area.
Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I was until a few years ago, a machine operator in plastic extrusion. All but one of our engineers were useless. Did they do work? Sure. Was it productive to the line? Occasionally…
We paid $20,000 for a new mil thickness tester, made by young engineers at the local university.
They held a whole “class” to show us how it worked, presentes not by the ones who build it, but by our engineers.
It failed during presentation. So we all learned how to measure manually instead. It never worked. They ended up installing the old one back, which hardly worked.
Then for the next year it sat broken, and unless the old thickness tester was in a good mood, we had to do it manually, which was so utterly time consuming and difficult.
While I think engineers are important so many just fuck around, least where I worked.
Hacksaw@lemmy.ca 16 hours ago
The idea of letting young engineers at a university design production equipment is WILD to me. Universities make PROTOTYPES. The gap between prototype and reliable production equipment is so big you could drive a bus through it.
A good production engineer is worth their weight in gold but when you have shitty ones you’re better off letting the workers run the ship. At least they know what’s happening and where the hangups are. You’ll know a good engineer because they’re down talking to the lead hands on the shop floor because they want to understand what’s actually happening and run ideas through the shop before they fuck with things.