The first time someone called me a “Production Engineer,” I instinctively looked around. Who was he talking about? Wasn’t I a Process Engineer? Or had I somehow become part of Operations? I was standing in the control room, safety boots on, helmet tucked under my arm, facing a plant that was not behaving the way it had always behaved so neatly on paper.
On paper, I knew exactly how the process worked. Heat transfer, residence time, reaction kinetics, I had spent countless nights studying them, running calculations, building models, and writing reports. For fifteen years, my world had been filled with P&IDs, design specifications, and meeting rooms. And then, suddenly, I was there. Surrounded by operators who did not know the process from textbooks, but from sound, smell, vibration, and experience.
“It’s running rough,” one of them said. .
No numbers. No historical data. No graphs. Just a trend, fluctuations in operating parameters, and a simple observation: “It’s running rough.” .
And honestly? He was right.
That was the moment I realized: this is a different reality. Here, engineering is not only calculated; it is experienced.
No Longer a Process Engineer, Not Yet an Operator
My job title had changed, but my identity was still catching up. As a production engineer, I suddenly found myself in an in-between space. No longer the designer working from a distance, yet not the person operating the controls either. I had become the translator. Between diagrams and steel. Between theory and practice. Between management language and the straightforward observations of the shift crew.
And it was precisely there that my learning journey began all over again.
I delivered calculations. They came with stories.
I brought assumptions. They brought exceptions.
I said, “In theory, it should…”
They replied, “Yes, but when it’s hot, it always does this.”
And slowly, I learned that both can be true.
CURIOUS ABOUT MY NEXT EXPERIENCE? Read next week’s blog.
By Ing. T... — Production Engineer