Manufacturing

I like manufacturing. I really LIKE manufacturing. I spent over 20 years working as a manufacturing engineer in an auto-parts factory, first trying to reduce material costs then designing, modifying, or validating standards compliance of the control systems of the automated machinery used to produce the parts, eventually specializing in the computing systems that tested each manufactured part to ensure it would do whatever it was supposed to do.

One of the things I enjoyed the most was wondering what the parts we made would become in the context of their use by those who purchased the cars our products became part of.

Our biggest product, the one the factory was originally built to produce, was starter motors. As mundane a part as they come (though try getting your car going without one). Yeah, most would be mundane parts in mundane cars used by mundane people in mundane situations.

But some ... some would end up in ambulances or fire engines and play a tiny but critical part in saving lives. Some would end up in cars that took newlyweds into their new lives as a couple. Some would play a tiny but critical part in bringing a new baby home from the hospital. Some would play a tiny but critical part in taking a mourning family to the final resting place of a loved one.

And I helped make them.