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What is a normal working day of an Materials Engineer like?

From the Interview with Cheryl Anderson, read the whole interview here.

My current job involves working with the customers of a steel producer to understand why different material properties are important to them. Sometimes this means I am looking at tables of data or reading reports about how different manufacturing processes work. But much more I am involved in actually going out and meeting the customers and looking at their production facilities so that I can really understand how they use the steel that we make. For example, last week I visited a factory in Italy and in a few weeks I will be travelling to Eastern Europe. I also go to quite a lot of meetings, some only a few minutes long and some that are quite a lot longer, sometimes days!

To give you an idea of my week I have listed some of things that I was doing last week below:

• Monday – Write a report about a meeting that I had with a customer and prepare a presentation for the management team about how the visit went.

• Tuesday – Joint meeting with some other departments to discuss how we can improve the way in which we make our products. • Wednesday – Research on the internet about how certain materials are being used by some of our customers.

• Thursday – Travel to Italy, some meetings with the customer, a tour of their site and discussion about some technical issues that we are both interested in.

• Friday – more meetings with the customer; travel back to the UK – got back quite late!

 

Read also 'A Day In The Life Of A Materials Engineer' by Tony Beaumont (from Article Desk website)