Manufacturing Solutions Consultant SME (Manufacturing SME)

Manufacturing Solutions Consultant SME (Manufacturing SME)

Location: Maumee / Toledo, Ohio, USA (Frequent travel to customer manufacturing facilities across North America)

We are seeking an experienced Manufacturing Solutions Consultant to join our growing Consulting team based in the Toledo/Maumee, Ohio area. This role serves as the manufacturing domain expert supporting strategic customer engagements across North America.

As part of the Consulting organization, you will partner with Sales, Solution Architects, Product Management, and Delivery teams to help manufacturing customers identify opportunities to improve operational performance through digital manufacturing, industrial data, automation, and manufacturing intelligence solutions.

This is a highly customer-facing role requiring regular visits to manufacturing plants, where you will engage with plant leadership, engineering, maintenance, production, quality, and operations teams to uncover business challenges, conduct operational assessments, and shape practical solutions that deliver measurable business outcomes.

You will also act as the manufacturing voice within our organization, helping bridge customer requirements with our consulting capabilities and product roadmap.

Key Responsibilities

Manufacturing Consulting & Customer Discovery

• Conduct discovery workshops with manufacturing customers to understand their operational goals, business challenges, and manufacturing priorities.
• Perform factory walk-throughs and shop floor assessments to identify opportunities for operational improvement, digitalization, and manufacturing intelligence.
• Engage directly with plant managers, operations leaders, engineering teams, maintenance organizations, and manufacturing leadership.
• Evaluate existing manufacturing processes, automation landscape, production systems, and operational workflows.
• Identify high-value business opportunities across production, maintenance, quality, energy, asset utilization, and operational excellence.

Presales & Solution Consulting

• Serve as the Manufacturing SME during customer pursuits and strategic sales opportunities.
• Participate in first level calls (when applicable) and second-level customer discussions to qualify opportunities and shape solution direction.
• Translate manufacturing challenges into solution requirements and implementation roadmaps.
• Craft high level solution and collaborate with Solution Architects to develop scalable, business-focused solutions leveraging manufacturing platforms, industrial connectivity, analytics, AI, and enterprise integrations.
• Support customer presentations, executive workshops, demonstrations, proposals, and RFP/RFI responses.
• Help quantify expected business outcomes across end to end manufacturing value chain while being strong in area of the shopfloor, including productivity improvements, OEE gains, reduced downtime, improved quality, energy savings, and operational efficiencies.

Industry Solution Development

• Define manufacturing use cases like: Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), Downtime Reduction, Predictive Maintenance, Condition Monitoring, Energy Management, Digital Production Monitoring, Manufacturing Performance Analytics, Asset Performance Management, Quality Analytics, Production Traceability, Digital Twin, RFQ Automation, NPD use cases.
• Recommend solution approaches aligned to customer maturity, operational priorities, and technology landscape.
• Advise customers on manufacturing data requirements from ERP, MES, SCADA, PLCs, historians, sensors, and production equipment.
• Look at outcomes that can be driven at Corporate level like transformation to global operations , finance modernization, etc

Product & Practice Collaboration

• Act as the interface between Consulting, Product Management, Engineering, and Delivery teams.
• Translate customer feedback into actionable product enhancement recommendations.
• Collaborate with Product teams on new manufacturing capabilities, connectors, dashboards, and industry accelerators.
• Support transition from presales to delivery by ensuring customer objectives and business context are clearly communicated.
• Provide manufacturing expertise during solution reviews and customer design sessions.

Consulting Practice Development

• Develop reusable manufacturing consulting frameworks, assessment methodologies, and solution playbooks.
• Build industry-specific accelerators, reference architectures, and best practices.
• Mentor consulting teams on manufacturing processes, operational excellence, and Industry 4.0 trends.
• Represent the company at customer events, manufacturing forums, and industry conferences where appropriate.
• Stay current on emerging manufacturing technologies, operational excellence methodologies, and industrial innovation trends.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Production Engineering, Mechatronics, or a related discipline.
• 10 12 years of experience in manufacturing operations, industrial engineering, manufacturing consulting, plant automation, or Industry 4.0.
• Strong understanding of manufacturing processes across discrete manufacturing, automotive, industrial equipment, metals, consumer goods, or process industries.
• Experience engaging with manufacturing leadership and plant operations teams.
• Demonstrated experience conducting operational assessments, manufacturing workshops, or solution discovery engagements.
• Familiarity with manufacturing systems such as MES, ERP, SCADA, PLCs, CMMS, historians, or industrial IoT platforms.
• Ability to translate operational challenges into practical technology-enabled business solutions.
• Excellent communication, presentation, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills.
• Willingness to travel extensively to customer manufacturing facilities across North America (approximately 40 60%).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting manufacturing technology presales or consulting engagements.
• Knowledge of Industry 4.0, Smart Manufacturing, Connected Factory, Digital Manufacturing, or Manufacturing Intelligence initiatives.
• Familiarity with industrial communication standards and manufacturing integration architectures.
• Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma Green Belt/Black Belt, TPM, or Operational Excellence certifications.
• Experience working with manufacturing software platforms, industrial analytics, or AI-enabled manufacturing solutions.
• Experience collaborating with global delivery teams across consulting, engineering, and product organizations.

Key Attributes

• Trusted manufacturing advisor with the ability to build credibility on the shop floor and in the executive boardroom.
• Naturally curious with a passion for understanding manufacturing operations and uncovering improvement opportunities.
• Strong consultative approach focused on solving business problems rather than selling technology.
• Comfortable leading customer workshops, factory assessments, and executive presentations.
• Collaborative mindset with the ability to work across Sales, Consulting, Product Management, Engineering, and Delivery teams.
• Commercially aware with the ability to identify follow-on opportunities and expand customer relationships.
• Self-driven, adaptable, and comfortable working in a dynamic consulting environment.

Success in this role will be measured by:

• Reducing sales cycle duration by accelerating customer discovery, solution alignment, and technical qualification of opportunities.
• Increasing qualified pipeline value through proactive identification and development of manufacturing transformation opportunities during customer engagements and factory assessments.
• Improving opportunity conversion and win rates by providing compelling manufacturing domain expertise, solution consulting, and business value articulation.
• Increasing average deal value by identifying cross-sell, upsell, and multi-phase transformation opportunities across customer manufacturing operations.
• Strengthening executive customer relationships, resulting in repeat engagements, strategic account growth, and trusted advisor status with manufacturing leadership.
• Enhancing consulting effectiveness by developing reusable manufacturing discovery frameworks, assessment methodologies, industry accelerators, and solution playbooks that improve consistency and speed of solution development.
• Driving product and service innovation by translating recurring customer needs into enhancements for product capabilities, consulting offerings, and industry-specific solutions.
• Supporting the growth of the North American Consulting practice through thought leadership, manufacturing expertise, and measurable contribution to consulting-led revenue growth.