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- Oversee a group of manufacturing workers in a factory or workshop
- You'll need good people skills and organisational skills
- Opportunities to progress into production management or quality control
As a manufacturing supervisor, you'll oversee production lines and ensure they run smoothly.
DAY-TO-DAY DUTIES
- Planning shift rotas
- Reporting machinery breakdowns, stock control and ordering supplies
- Making sure your team meets its production targets
- Carrying out quality control checks and writing reports
- Updating paperwork like holiday requests and sick leave
- Organising staff training
DAY-TO-DAY ENVIRONMENT
You'll spend time in an office and on the factory floor, where you'll wear protective clothing.
You'll need
For this role you'll need leadership skills, knowledge of manufacturing production and processes, thoroughness and attention to detail, the ability to use, repair and maintain machines and tools, good initiative, excellent verbal communication skills, sensitivity and understanding, and thinking and reasoning skills.
Direct application is possible, but you'll usually need qualifications and experience from related manufacturing work such as machinery maintenance or quality control.
You could work your way up to a supervisor's job after getting 1 or 2 years' experience as a production worker.
You can do a college course such as team leading to get you into this job and provide you with skills and knowledge you need in this job.
You could also do a team leader advanced apprenticeship or process leader higher apprenticeship.
CAREER PROSPECTS
With experience you could move into quality control, production planning and management, or research and development.