Role-specific Applied Engineering Interview Questions & Answers:

1. Explain production planning in Applied Engineering?

Production planning is the planning of production and manufacturing processes in a company or industry. It utilizes the resource allocation of activities of employees, materials and production capacity, in order to serve different customers.

2. Do you know inventory control in Applied Engineering?

Inventory Control is the supervision of supply, storage and accessibility of items in order to ensure an adequate supply without excessive oversupply.

It can also be referred as internal control - an accounting procedure or system designed to promote efficiency or assure the implementation of a policy or safeguard assets or avoid fraud and error etc.

3. What is Scheduling (production processes) in Applied Engineering?

Scheduling is the process of arranging, controlling and optimizing work and workloads in a production process or manufacturing process. Scheduling is used to allocate plant and machinery resources, plan human resources, plan production processes and purchase materials.

4. What is Control chart in Applied Engineering?

Control charts, also known as Shewhart charts after Walter A. Shewhart or process-behavior charts, in statistical process control are tools used to determine if a manufacturing or business process is in a state of statistical control.

5. What is Product Design in Applied Engineering?

Product design is the process of creating a new product to be sold by a business to its customers. A very broad concept, it is essentially the efficient and effective generation and development of ideas through a process that leads to new products.

In a systematic approach, product designers conceptualize and evaluate ideas, turning them into tangible inventions and products. The product designer's role is to combine art, science, and technology to create new products that people can use. Their evolving role has been facilitated by digital tools that now allow designers to communicate, visualize, analyze and actually produce tangible ideas in a way that would have taken greater manpower in the past.

6. What software do you really know for Applied Engineering?

When Crawford Hentz questions mechanical engineering candidates about their experience with software packages like SolidWorks, Pro/ENGINEER and AutoCAD, she's looking for more than surface-level working knowledge. “I ask, ‘What's the coolest thing you know how to do with the package?'” she says.

Here, the employer is attempting to gauge fluency, or applied expertise. It's nice to merely be familiar with, say, COSMOSWorks, says Crawford Hentz. It's another thing entirely to use the program for finite-element analysis on the LEDs Osram Sylvania manufactures, which “don't mind getting cold but hate to get hot,” she says.

7. Explain what is Industrial Engineering?

Industrial Engineering (IE) focuses on analyzing industrial process. Often the basis of the analysis is small group psychology. IE also is focused in part on "efficiency" concerns in manufacturing. Studies in IE were revolutionized by Prof. W. Edwards Deming who provided much of spark that ignited the Japanese auto industry in the 1970s.

8. What is Applied Engineering Sciences (AES)?

The Applied Engineering Sciences major is systems driven. One defining characteristic of the AES program is the concentration chosen by each student. AES students are generalist engineers who take a systems level perspective on problem solving in general. AES students embody the principles of the Engineer of 2020 (National Academy of Engineering (2004). The Engineer of 2020: Visions of engineering in the new century) especially on being broadly educated in engineering, being a effective leader and communicator, and being a life long learner.

9. Please tell us do you truly understand Clients/Customers and teamwork?

There's a difference between the fantasy of engineering as a form of individual expression and the reality of engineering as a business.

“When you're in school, you're designing to please yourself,” says Crawford Hentz. “You get to ‘build a robot.' But in a manufacturing or product development setting, you're dealing with ‘build me a toolbox that looks like this and can sing [the national anthem].'”

So expect to be questioned about how you've dealt with client/customer concerns and personalities in the past. And be sure you're also ready to explain how you've collaborated with diverse colleagues to meet the sometimes demanding expectations of clients and customers.

“We want people who bring value to the group, not only with their technical skills, but also their creativity and their personality, because your ideas aren't the only ideas,”

10. Tell us can you solve problems with your hands as well as your head?

It's one thing to tackle engineering problems in a theoretical, cerebral context. But often you've literally got to get your hands dirty to make something work the way it's supposed to.