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Meet The Expert | Michael Guest
Getting a new product from prototype to full production with minimal quality issues, delays or costly rework takes rigorous process discipline. Michael Guest, HSSMI’s Technical Lead for Manufacturing Engineering, has built his career on exactly that discipline.
Michael is a Manufacturing Engineering Technical Lead with strong experience in production readiness and manufacturing performance improvement within the automotive sector. He has delivered projects across the full product lifecycle, from process design to production ramp-up and full production, ensuring robust and repeatable manufacturing systems.
A Specialist in Cycle Time, Quality and Waste Reduction
Michael is particularly skilled in cycle time optimisation, line balancing and waste reduction, alongside driving quality improvements through structured methodologies such as PFMEA and control plans, the kind of hands-on rigour that separates a smooth production launch from a troubled one.
A Portfolio Built at Jaguar Land Rover
Michael’s project experience, largely delivered at Jaguar Land Rover, spans a wide range of manufacturing engineering challenges:
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- Circular Economy: Remanufacturing Automotive Components. Michael led the introduction of remanufacturing operations, including process validation and quality assurance frameworks, developing PFMEA, control plans and inspection standards to ensure consistent product quality. He delivered the full project lifecycle from concept to launch, including operator training.
- Manufacturing Strategy: Vertical Integration Studies. Michael conducted feasibility studies including make-vs-buy analysis and cost modelling to support sourcing decisions, and defining manufacturing concepts including cycle time targets, throughput modelling and resource planning.
- Lean Manufacturing: Fabrication Workshop Scale Up. Michael led continuous improvement initiatives focused on cycle time reduction, bottleneck elimination and line balancing, implementing lean tools to reduce waste and achieve measurable productivity gains, and introducing quality checks and in-process controls to improve right-first-time performance.
- Manufacturing Engineering: Vehicle Launch. Michael managed manufacturing engineering activities for new vehicle introduction, including process validation, authoring process documentation, Bill of Process and SOPs, and leading run-at-rate trials, capacity validation and cycle time verification to ensure production readiness.
- Manufacturing Engineering: Assembly Standards (BoP). Michael authored assembly standards and guidelines with integrated quality requirements, inspection criteria and control plans, conducting internal and external benchmarking and supporting deployment of standards across multiple manufacturing sites.
A Postgraduate Engineer with a Structured Approach to Quality
Michael holds a BEng (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering, an MSc in Advanced Manufacturing Engineering & Management, and is a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt. His core skills, including lean manufacturing, Bill of Process & Bill of Sequence, design for assembly, cycle time analysis and line balancing, and process optimisation, reflect a structured, evidence-based approach to manufacturing engineering.
Why It Matters
The gap between a good product design and a successful production launch is filled by exactly this kind of disciplined manufacturing engineering. Michael’s expertise in production readiness and quality systems is helping HSSMI’s clients avoid costly launch problems and build manufacturing systems that are robust from day one.
Want to learn more about how HSSMI’s manufacturing engineering expertise can support your project? Get in touch with our team.
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