Hi There,

Interesting question.

Honestly speaking, relevance or work experience and pursuing a course is interconnected, whereby the experience which helps you strengthening your subject knowledge is fruitful than the other way round.

Since you are opting for a career as a management consultant. For you to be successful in your job, you would need to know the basics of the job. The technicality and the entire process is important, only then can you work as a consultant.

Now as a Maintenance engineer, your role would be to enhances service quality and equipment reliability by improving workflows and optimizing maintenance processes.
Again this requires you to get into the in-depth understanding of equipment and their functionality.

As a design engineer, you would mainly be involved in designing of the equipment needed for the process of manufacturing. Again you get involved in the basic process.

Since both the jobs involve working at the grass root level, giving you complete knowledge of the process, both the jobs are relevant to your career prospects in the future.

Depending on which has a greater impact, you would have to choose accordingly.

As a Counselor and a layman, I feel that as a maintenance engineer, though your knowledge of the machines are good, but you are not in the process of designing it from the scratch. Whereas as a design engineer, you are into the brainstorming process of designing or redesigning the machines and are involved right from the scratch.

Hope this helps you in making a decision.

Wish you good luck..............