When I first heard the title MFG engineer, I thought it was just a fancy way to say “the guy who fixes production problems.” Turns out, that was only about half right. After years of being on the manufacturing floor, dealing with operators, managers, machines, and spreadsheets that never quite matched reality, I learned this role is way more hands-on and way more human than people think. Early on, I made the classic mistake of thinking process documents mattered more than people. I spent weeks perfecting a work instruction, only to find out nobody used it because it didn’t match…