Recommend technical design or process changes to improve efficiency, quality, or performance
Part of the output can be produced by software today.
Software drafts well and sends at volume, and vertical support agents now resolve a large share of inbound questions end to end. What does not transfer is the relationship, and the judgment about when a message should not be sent at all.
| How automatable | Partly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Routine communication and explanation |
| Jobs that do it | 21 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Vertical agents, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Providing Consultation and Advice to Others (4.A.4.b.6) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 21 occupations that perform it.
- Recommend process formulas, instrumentation, or equipment specifications, based on results of bench or pilot experimentation.
- Provide technical advice to industrial or managerial personnel regarding design, construction, program modifications, or structural repairs.
- Provide technical direction or supervision to junior engineers, engineering or computer-aided design (CAD) technicians, or other technical personnel.
- Provide technical support to designers, marketing and sales departments, suppliers, engineers and other team members throughout the product development and implementation process.
- Recommend repair or design modifications of electronics components or systems, based on factors such as environment, service, cost, or system capabilities.
- Recommend methods for improving utilization of personnel, material, and utilities.
- Provide human factors technical expertise on topics, such as advanced user-interface technology development or the role of human users in automated or autonomous sub-systems in advanced vehicle systems.
- Recommend resolution of identified deviations from established product or process standards.
- Determine root causes of failures or recommend changes in designs, tolerances, or processing methods, using statistical procedures.
- Review new product plans, and make recommendations for material selection, based on design objectives such as strength, weight, heat resistance, electrical conductivity, and cost.
- Provide feedback to design engineers on customer problems or needs.
- Recommend or implement changes to fuel cell system designs.
- Recommend best fuel for specific sites or circumstances.
- Provide consultation or training on topics such as mechatronics or automated control.
- Recommend process or infrastructure changes to improve wind turbine performance, reduce operational costs, or comply with regulations.
- Review specifications and recommend engineering or manufacturing changes to achieve solar design objectives.
- Represent architect or engineer on construction site, ensuring builder compliance with design specifications and advising on design corrections, under supervision.
- Recommend corrective or preventive actions to assure or improve product quality or reliability.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for routine communication and explanation, and what it costs.
Drafting replies costs nothing beyond the assistant you already pay for. Only move to a support agent billed per resolution once the inbound volume is large enough that the per-resolution price beats the hour it takes you.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
21 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Architectural and Civil Drafters
- Automotive Engineering Technicians
- Bioengineers and Biomedical Engineers
- Civil Engineers
- Computer Hardware Engineers
- Electronics Engineers, Except Computer
- Energy Engineers, Except Wind and Solar
- Fuel Cell Engineers
- Human Factors Engineers and Ergonomists
- Industrial Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Industrial Engineers
- Manufacturing Engineers
- Materials Engineers
- Mechanical Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Mechanical Engineers
- Mechatronics Engineers
- Photonics Technicians
- Solar Energy Systems Engineers
- Validation Engineers
- Water/Wastewater Engineers
- Wind Energy Engineers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Advise others on business or operational matters”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.