Mit-chell Cheatham This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. Changing Technologies: Manufacturing engineers make it happen

   www.diversitycareers.com/artic - [Cached]

   Last Visited: 9/16/2005

   Mitchell Cheatham
   ...
   Mitchell Cheatham
   
   ME Mitchell Cheatham manages machine lines for International As engineering resource manager for the engine plant of International Truck and Engine (Indianapolis, IN), Mit-chell Cheatham manages machine lines for camshafts, crankshafts and connecting rods. He supervises a group of five process engineers, two control engineers and a "floater."
   
   "We set up documentation for control plans, work instructions and quality systems for the processes," he says. "We also get involved with machine maintenance, and we do the specification and purchasing for equipment for those lines."
   
   Cheatham, who grew up in rural Indiana, received his BSME from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (Terre Haute, IN). He chose manufacturing, he says, because he liked the "hands-on feel, being able to see a product being made, being able to make changes and see the effects of those changes right away."
   
   He began at International as a process engineer, handling documentation and doing time studies and the like. After a year he moved to the design department.
   
   He left International for an opportunity at Newell Window Furnishings (Freeport, IL), a maker of curtain rods, where he worked as a manufacturing engineer for about three years.
   
   Then he returned to International, soon joining the company's advanced manufacturing group. The group was a new idea, set up to handle manufacturing process design equipment purchases for a new engine. "I spent three years in that group," Cheatham says. "When all the equipment arrived and the engine program started, I came back to the plant in the position I'm in now."
   
   From an engineering and equipment standpoint, "I think the mindset is the same in any industry you go to," says Cheatham. "The basic principles of machine motion remain the same, and the types of components, although they may be bigger or smaller from one industry to the next, are essentially similar." The major change he's seen in manufacturing technology is from the control standpoint.