A workflow engineer is a professional responsible for designing, documenting and optimizing a workflow. This is accomplished by identifying all the processes, tasks, steps and stakeholders in a given process. Often, the workflow will be documented with a diagram to help visualize it. A workflow can be simple or complex.

Streamlining Your Engineering Workflow: Tools & Strategies

For example, in manufacturing, workflows can be designed to improve productivity. For example, products can move through a specific sequence of steps that never changes (a flow shop) or they can be manufactured using different machines in a varying process each time (a job shop). Mechanical engineer Frederick Taylor is credited with developing the scientific management theories that are foundational to workflows.

When creating a workflow, it is important to know your stakeholders and the type of information they will want to see. For instance, executive-level stakeholders may require quick access to high-level data that is easy to understand. Similarly, data analysts may need to see granular details with the flexibility to filter and correlate as needed.

Having the right software to manage engineering workflows allows your team to reduce review and approval time, streamline file relationships and eliminate human error. This can lead to better overall project management, fewer delays and quicker time to market.

When setting up engineering workflows, it is important to prioritize automating only those steps that can be reliably controlled by algorithms and not human intervention. Requiring manual intervention decreases speed and increases the potential for an error to bring production to a halt.