Working It: Engineer helps companies improve their work

* Name: Brent Boxall

* Position: Senior applications engineer

* Location: Automation IG

* First job: Working in his father’s hardware store, fixing lawnmowers

* Favorite part: Getting to conceptualize and “invent” a methodology for letting robots solve a problem in one of our customer’s facilities. “[I like] trying to come up with a new and innovative way to save the customer money and coming up with ways to make the customer’s manufacturing process more efficient.”

* Least favorite part of the job: “Writing proposals to a customer describing what we’ll do for them and how much it costs. I’d rather be actually designing the ideas I come up with rather than writing a quote about them. I don’t get to do as much designing as I used to. There’s a whole other team of engineers that do the designing now, and I don’t get to design as much as I used to.”

* Best challenge of the job: Trying to get a customer’s manufacturing process figured out so they can invest the least amount of money and get the most amount of productivity out of the system they’re buying.

* What he’s learned: “People or companies only invest where it makes money.” As a mechanical engineer, he said, he is accustomed to putting the priority on the machinery itself first and the economic impact second, but business people will often prioritize the bottom line. “In this job it’s all about what’s the most efficient usage of the money available.”

* How to make a career: Have a mechanical engineering degree, or study mechatronics engineering. Learn on the job with a company that deals with robotics.