What are some essential skills that a mechanical engineer should learn?

Mechanical Engineering can broadly be viewed as an amalgam of following three streams:

• Design Engineering
• Production Engineering
• Industrial Management

Most streams you have heard of like robotics, automobile engineering, aerospace engineering or bioengineering can be grouped into one of the above three streams. For example, ‘Medical Device Development’ is a key area of research in bioengineering. It involves two stages:

• Design Specifications and Simulation (Design Engineering)
• Fabrication (Production Engineering)

So, as a mechanical engineer, you can either be a generalist or a specialist. Now, you can specialize in one of the three streams.

Design Engineering: A design engineer mostly deals with the computational aspects. A few skills required are:

• Computer Aided Design (CAD): CAD is often the heart and soul of ergonomics and industrial design. A mechanical engineer looking to specialize in this area must master software like SolidWorks, CATIA, CREO/Pro-E, Rhino etc.
• Finite Element Analysis (FEA): Most designed components and the material to be used for design of components, say sandwich composites for the chassis of aeroplane, are tested for failure using software like ANSYS, COMSOL or ABAQUS. Often you have to work with mesh reduction software such as Meshlab to achieve computational results faster.
• Computational Fluid Dynamics: Design of turbomachinery and microfluidic drug delivery systems involve complex calculations and the design dimensions can be optimized using CFD. ANSYS Fluent and OpenFOAM are great tools to work with CFD applications.
• Mechatronics: Engineers who are keen to specialize in mechatronics often deal with control systems engineering. For control system design, one needs to be well versed with MATLAB/Simulink. I found it useful while simulating the motion of an exoskeleton using a reference signal generated from the biomechanical data of a person walking on the level ground.
• Computer Programming: Industries have customized software which often require coding in C/C++ environment to achieve complex operations. Sometimes, analyzing the results generated by ANSYS also requires programming skills. You don’t have to be a developer but a basic knowledge in a High Level Programming Language is crucial to be a successful design engineer.

Production Engineering: This stream is concerned with manufacturing processes, industrial automation, and quality engineering. The skills may range from traditional milling to unconventional manufacturing techniques like Electro Discharge Machining (EDM).

Industrial Management: This stream mostly focuses on supply chain and operations research. Optimization problems are ever evolving areas of research in this stream. One needs sound mathematical and analytical skills to have success in this stream. Strong foundation in computer programming and data analysis will give an impetus to your career.

Other skills are very generic to any engineering discipline like:

• Interpersonal skills that involve communication and leadership skills
• Engineering Ethics