Deserved or not, engineers have a reputation for being good with machines but bad with people. Essentially, they'd rather be left alone with their gadgets and bits of wire and not be bothered by customers, staff or budgets.
Business managers on the other hand are very concerned by budgets and accounts, suppliers and productivity, but may not fully appreciate the requirements and activities of the engineer.
Traditionally, production was managed by engineers who acquired some business skills on the job, or through the odd management course. However modern manufacturing industries require people who have a high level of competency in both the technical and managerial sides of the business for the efficient operation and long-term development of their organisations.
"Production managers are the people who pull together the four Ps - people, procedures, products and processes," course leader of the bachelor of technology in production management at UL, Peter Williams, explains.
"Traditional mechanical engineering is strongly focused on the product, and little on the other three Ps. Production engineers are responsible for the processes in designing products. Production managers need also to focus on the people and the procedures, i.e. the formal systems of the organisation, as well as having a good understanding of the products and the processes."
A good production manager has a combination of personal skills and a reasonable grasp of engineering, says Williams.
"It's an interdisciplinary career based on a shared understanding of the needs of engineering and the demands of business. Their prime source of influence is informal. You can't kick someone's hide to get things done - most of the time you're relying on people's goodwill."
Typically, he says, production managers are "reasonably bright" people who wouldn't be honours-maths A students, but do have an interest in engineering and tend to get on well with people.
"Production managers deal with practical work and would be involved with suppliers on an on-going basis," he says.
"In comparison with traditional engineers who work on a project-by-project basis, production managers generally have an area of responsibility, such as logistics or materials management."
The production management course leads to a bachelor of technology rather than a bachelor of engineering qualification, therefore graduates are not entitled to become members of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland. They fall somewhere in the middle ground between the technician and the engineer, Williams says.
"They tend to require people-skills, a certain amount of accounting and an appreciation of what other people's jobs involve. Their level of numerical and analytical skills do not need to be very high, but it's crucial they understand on a very deep level what people's problems are."
Production managers will find employment as quality managers (rather than the technician level quality controller). They act as the marketing link between the organisation and the external market. The could be supply-chain managers, industrial purchasers or operations planners.
Production managers are ideally placed to deal with changing business environment, an essential prerequisite today..
"Because of the nature of how they look at things is a systems approach, they can be stretched from bottling water to making catheters. They have a set of skills that are not situation specific. So, for example, if the IT industry goes down they can go into the health sector. They're not tied to an industry sector."
The job can be stressful, says Williams, but it is varied and fast-paced and suits people who are bright, intelligent and get on with others.
