Rachel Marugg
Process Equipment Engineer
Hi! As a Process Engineering Manager, I strive to help individuals, teams, and processes to find their full potential and work to remove any roadblocks to help get them there. Sigma Design has a diverse number of roles throughout the company to help match individuals to the right project. The variety and complexity of projects that come through Sigma Design's doors allows each individual the opportunity to apply their best skills. I've had the opportunity to be an Equipment and Process Engineer with an emphasis in Failure Analysis on both the equipment and product side of production, as well as applying LEAN manufacturing principles to my roles. The idea is to root cause systemic issues and optimize their corrective actions to further build better products for our clients. This is what gets me going; of course, only after my morning cup of coffee.
My educational background is in Electrical Engineering, but my career has given me the opportunity to be an engineer across different industries and phases of product development which has allowed me to grow in many ways. As I continue to grow and develop within Sigma Design, my goal is to continually improve our processes and deliver quality solutions to challenging problems for our customers.
Questions & Answers
How do you make people laugh?
It's not just about making people laugh, but to provide an environment that encourages laughter. One of the ways I do that is being able to laugh at myself. If I make a mistake and am able to laugh at myself (of course when it's not in a serious situation) and turn it into an opportunity to learn from, I think more and more people would feel more at ease and be able to laugh at themselves as well.
If you were a tool or piece of equipment, what would you be and why?
If I were a tool, I would be an Excel spreadsheet. Now hear me out, when have you not needed a spreadsheet? I could gather up all kinds of information, organize it, calculate anything I needed out of it, and present it in ways to be helpful to solve a problem.
What's your favorite productivity hack or time-saving trick?
Calendars and Tasks lists are things that genuinely give me comfort. To be more specific, by using a calendar to keep track of meetings, due by tasks, and spaces where I can have focused blocks of time; it allows me to have a snapshot of my week (or month) and helps me prioritize when I need to get tasks done. In addition, organization of my tasks into a filterable list or Kanban board, I can further prioritize items and make sure nothing gets left behind.
A bonus productivity hack: If there's ever a task you are dreading to do, just work on it for 20 minutes. This Pomodoro technique will help you get over the initial hurdle of starting a daunting task. If after those 20 minutes you start to enter a flow state, you can keep on doing that task. If you hit the 20-minute mark and you're still not into it, then you're probably not in the best state of mind to do the quality work you know you can do. But, you've at least done 20 minutes of work on it today anyway.
A bonus productivity hack: If there's ever a task you are dreading to do, just work on it for 20 minutes. This Pomodoro technique will help you get over the initial hurdle of starting a daunting task. If after those 20 minutes you start to enter a flow state, you can keep on doing that task. If you hit the 20-minute mark and you're still not into it, then you're probably not in the best state of mind to do the quality work you know you can do. But, you've at least done 20 minutes of work on it today anyway.