What is a LEANgineer?

LEANgineer is the description that I give to the job that I do everyday. This is a self proclaimed Title, as I have never heard of it other then when I use it to describe what I do.

A LEANgineer is a cross between a LEAN Advisor or Teacher and a Manufacturing Engineer.

In my daily job duties I have to be both. I am responsible for specific work cells in our plant. We have a robust idea program in which our employees are encouraged to submit their ideas to improve their machine, cell, or even the plant in some cases. With a constant stream of ideas coming in I am responsible to provide research, coordinate the design process, as well as the implementation process, and do the follow up to make sure that we really have made an improvement instead of what we assumed would be an improvement.

I take care of the LEAN and process training that goes on in my areas. This can get very tricky in the scheduling process as we don't want to interupt production for too long. Training is key to the understanding of why we are doing what we are doing and why we are heading in a specific direction. But production is our bread and butter, so if it isn't happening the company isn't making money and no company can last very long doing that.

I, myself must keep up with my own training and learning in the areas of LEAN. If I don't continually learn and better myself how can I teach others and keep improving their understanding of the principles?

I guess you could say that a LEANgineer is the backbone of LEAN Manufacturing in the company. This is the person that gets it done, the one that is propelling the company toward World Class Manufacturing. This position may be called many different names but it all comes down to every company that wants to be great needs this person to make it happen.