Sean Edwards

MECHANICAL ENGINEER

Skills Overview

Sean is passionate designer, who has built up his experience through a diverse range of rolls throughout the challenging dairy industry, working on design, commissioning and maintenance. His passion for mechanical design lead him into a production equipment design roll, achieving his Certified SolidWorks Professional certificate. His ability to take on a variety of projects and learn quickly, makes him a versatile designer in the food processing and manufacturing space.

PROCESSING PLANT DESIGN – Sean has experience in the dairy industry, designing new plants, developing systematic implementation of equipment and retrofitting improvements to existing plants. He has developed plants like a new Nitrogen generation plant, a cream handling plant and a whey pasteurizer.
PRODUCTION LINE DESIGN – Sean has developed packaging lines in the dairy field and designed production line equipment and jigs for the consumer products industry. His packaging line diced cheese packaging line reduced oxygen content in the bags from 10% down to 3% and his sub-assembly leak detection system eliminated customers returns for that specific problem to date.
COMPRESSED AIR & GAS SYSTEM DESIGN – With pneumatics being the tendons that make a factory move, understanding the flow and routing of pneumatic systems has become a grounding skill. The generation, conditioning, control and usage of compressed air is one of Sean’s core skills, developed as a part of his plant engineering skills.
PROBLEM SOLVING & TROUBLE SHOOTING – Sean is skilled at filtering information from various sources in order to get a true understanding of the system that he is trouble-shooting. He is able to identify root causes and suggest methods of creating a system that is better after the fix, not just back to normal.
INNOVATION & CREATIVE THINKING – Sean takes the ideas that are presented and always tries to bring perspective from previous experience and from brainstorming and comes up with forward-looking solutions that can bring solutions that meet customers criteria.
TECHNICAL COMMUNICATIONS – Sean has dealt with flat hierarchies in businesses and corporate hierarchies and has developed a great skill of communicating engineering and technical ideas to all stakeholders, from equipment operators through to executive decision makers.

Caliber Design has experience in the Biofuel industry

PERSONAL STATEMENT

After completing a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering, I began my career at one of South Africa’s leading dairy producers. I started in the maintenance department to understand the operational side of production, then moved into the production environment where I operated equipment and developed a detailed understanding of how factory systems integrate. After gaining experience across these disciplines, I progressed into designing and commissioning food production plants. My work ranged from redesigning pasteurisers and retrofitting plant modifications to building a butter packaging machine and complete production line, requiring a strong depth of technical understanding.

My interest in the mechanical side of design then led me into consumer product manufacturing, where I developed strong SolidWorks capability and designed and built a bespoke leak detection system for a subassembly, significantly reducing field failures. Alongside my professional work, I apply this passion for design and variety to musical instruments, teaching myself circuit board design and electronics for instrument applications.

Project Experience

IMPACT DISTRIBUTORS

Whey Pasteuriser Design & Implementation

Sean engineered a whey pasteuriser that maximized yield from the raw milk, ensured food-safety compliance, and integrated flawlessly into the existing dairy line. The result: higher-value whey output, reduced product loss, and a reliable, easy-to-clean system that boosted overall plant profitability while meeting customer requirements and future proofing the system for further processing options down the road.

15kg Butter Packaging Machine

Sean created a complete butter packaging machine and surrounding line that delivered precise portioning and minimal giveaway. They achieved cleaner hygienic throughput, consistent pack quality and reduced labour requirements. This translated directly into improved quality and market versatility in food-service channels.

CENTURION SYSTEMS

Sub-Assembly Leak Detection System

Sean developed a precise, production-integrated leak detection system that caught defects early in the assembly process. The solution dramatically improved client returns for the main fault, cut down rework, prevented costly field failures, and strengthened quality assurance—giving the client greater reliability, customer satisfaction.