who designs the heavy machinery - production lines

[tali122]

who designs the highly specalised heavy automated machinery and presses in automated production lines in manufacturing - is it production engineers?

[buildersmate]

The term production engineer usually refers to the technical specialist who specifies how to use a piece of automated machinery with a machine tool to produce a piecepart (in metal, plastic or whatever). He/she would specify the set-up parameters on the machine.
A production engineer would also be the guy/gal who decides to buy a new 50 tonne press, say, it make a new part. But the 50 tonne press itself is made by a machine tool manufacturer - a specialist company in its own right.

[john91]

When I worked for a large multi national manufacturing company, we designed nearly all of our own special purpose machinery as none was available to buy. The company had its own engineering design office and either made ourselves or had made by contract firms the machinery required.