FOCUS FEATURE


MANUFACTURING AND ENGINEERING The importance of


The Year of Engineering


Dr Laura Justham, a senior lecturer within the Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering at Loughborough University, looks at the issues facing the industry in relation to skills and diversity and assesses how they can be addressed.


Throughout 2018 the Government and Industry are supporting a year-long initiative to tackle the skills gap in engineering, looking to encourage more young people into the profession. The national campaign, named The Year of Engineering,


is aimed at raising awareness of the sector for children, parents and teachers. But, why do we need such an initiative and why is there such a lack of understanding of one of the vital professions within the UK? Irrespective of media perception, manufacturing alone


represents 68% of UK business research and development activities. However, all industrial sectors are feeling pressure to increase productivity, increase competitiveness and increase global reach. From a manufacturing perspective, within the UK, much of our activities are within the high- value manufacturing (HVM) domain, which often sees intricate products being created and complex systems being required to enable this. This complexity stems initially from customer demand,


built on a growing expectation for technological advancements making products better, faster, smaller, more efficient… the list goes on. However, the result for the engineering enterprise is the requirement for complex and multifaceted manufacturing systems, combining physical processes with virtual and digital systems. These are the so-called cyber-physical systems, which are now becoming pervasive across our engineering enterprises. They use the Internet of Things, The Cloud or perhaps Industry 4.0 to join up all aspects of a product’s life cycle and its peripheral systems. From an education perspective, encouraging young


people into the fields of manufacturing and engineering can be a challenge. The commonly held belief that engineers walk around in hard hats and safety boots is a far cry from the reality, with confusion as to what being a professional engineer really means. In addition, the lack of popularity of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) based A-level subjects in schools is causing engineering degree programmes to be untenable, non- inclusive and potentially lacking vital diversity within a cohort. When you consider alongside this the demographic dip in young people that we are currently facing, the Government, Industry, charities and education are slowly recognising the importance of addressing these issues. The widely-cited expanding skills gap of personnel


within the engineering sector, in spite of an aging workforce, is becoming more of a bottleneck to increasing the competitiveness of the UK as a whole. Traditionally, for manufacturing and engineering tasks, highly skilled and


42 business network April 2018


experienced workers would manufacture complex products by hand. This would allow high quality, bespoke, products to be supplied to a customer – proudly branded with the words “Made in Britain”. However, when competing in the global marketplace,


highly customisable products, short lead times and low costs must accompany these high quality goods forcing companies to source components from further afield or, in the worst case, to off-shore manufacture completely. In spite of this, these demands seemingly break the triple constraint, or iron triangle, of a project by demanding high quality at low cost, in a short time frame and with an ever- changing project requirements brief. In addition, as this highly skilled workforce, with years of experience built throughout a changing industrial


The commonly held beliefs of what an engineering career involves is often a far cry from reality


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68