The Solutions Engineer designs the operation.
When a customer needs receiving, storage, picking and shipping to work as one operation rather than as separate pieces of equipment, the Solutions Engineer analyzes their data, maps the process, designs the material flow across every functional area, and produces the concept everything downstream is built from.
The work is industrial engineering applied to a commercial pursuit: order profiles, rates, capacity, labor, and the tradeoffs between them, worked out with the customer and defensible in front of them. The Solutions Engineer hands the Application Engineer a high-level layout with the flow and the rates behind it, and the Application Engineer makes it real.
Staffing test: are we designing the operation, or equipping one that is already defined? A Solutions Engineer engages on greenfield facilities, material flow across multiple functional areas, reconfiguration or process redesign, and any pursuit with customer operational data to analyze. Replacements, expansions, defined-scope RFP responses and repeat scope run without one, and that is the normal case.
Innovation – We create a culture of relentless improvement of solutions and processes to make every day better.
Integrity – We are open, honest, and committed to giving the straight story every time.
Service – We serve our clients, families, communities, and most importantly our people who are empowered and safe in making decisions and taking actions that dare to make us better.
Ownership – We take full, personal, individual responsibility for our actions and our work.
Partner
They bring
You keep
Application Engineer
Equipment selection, detailed layout, manifest, BOM, CRD and the estimate
The flow, the rates, the block layout, and the technology in it
Electrical Estimating Engineer
Controls architecture and the electrical estimate
The operational flow and decision points their controls serve
Principal Solutions Engineer
Cross-discipline design review and final technical authority
The concept on your pursuit
Offering Manager
Proposal schedule, bid strategy, workload prioritization, and who staffs each subsystem
The technical concept and its defensibility
Sales
Commercial strategy, the customer relationship, the bid/no-bid decision
The technical read and the operation the customer is buying
Operations / Project Management
Acceptance criteria, field execution, commodity equipment selection
The technical basis the criteria are built on
Language. Reads and interprets customer specifications, operational data, contracts and statements of work. Presents and defends concepts to customers and to senior management. Mathematical. Throughput, capacity and queuing analysis. Applied statistics on operational data. Geometry and trigonometry applied to facility layout. Reasoning. Defines problems, collects data, establishes facts, and draws valid conclusions from incomplete information, stating the assumptions used to get there.
Travel to customer sites, vendor plants and job sites, typically 25% to 40%. Occasional international travel for site visits or training.
The Solutions Engineer role has four levels: Junior Solutions Engineer, Solutions Engineer, Senior Solutions Engineer and Principal Solutions Engineer. Senior comes from consistently sound operation design and passing the discipline’s method review, and carries sign-off on others’ concepts along with coaching. Principal holds cross-discipline technical authority. None of these levels manages people. Line management is a separate route, through Supervisor, Manager and Director of Solutions, open by choice rather than by seniority.
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to use hands to finger, handle, or feel and talk or hear. The employee frequently is required to walk, sit, and reach with hands and arms. The employee is occasionally required to stand and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. The employee must frequently lift and/or move up to 10 pounds and occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, and ability to adjust focus. Travel via automobile and/or commercial airline to customer offices for meetings, vendor’s plants, and job site to coordinate the conveyors or equipment with the building and installers.
The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is occasionally exposed to moving mechanical parts, outside weather conditions, risk of electrical shock, and risk of radiation. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate, unless performing work in shop or field conditions.
Fives, an industrial engineering group, designs and supplies machines, process equipment and production lines for the world's largest industrial players. Fives' multisector expertise provides a global vision of industries and markets that yield a continuous source of innovation.
The Group's industry knowledge and depth of experience enable the management of complex projects while respecting deadlines and fulfilling performance commitments.
Fives R&D programs design forward-thinking industrial solutions that anticipate clients' needs in terms of profitability, safety, while maintaining compliance with environmental standards.
This strategy is backed by a human resources policy that is focused on the individual, encourages initiative-taking and technical excellence.
As a technology-driven company and with an active portfolio with more 2,000 patents, Fives aims at being a benchmark player in the development of the plant of the future.
