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FOCUS FEATURE


As the range of engineering sectors increased, so too has the diversity in some workplaces


‘The national campaign, named The Year of Engineering, is aimed at raising awareness of the sector for children, parents and teachers’


landscape, begin to retire, we are beginning to experience a loss of capability and a loss of those skills we so highly value and require. As a nation we must therefore be proactive in our approach; we must work together – from early education through to university or an apprenticeship and into the workplace – to help ensure we bridge this gap and grow capability. One further thing in this complex equation that we


cannot afford to ignore is the industrial landscape. Technology has driven growth and development, not only within the workplace but also within society, for example with smart phones and tablet PCs, augmented and virtual reality environments, computer gaming, hobbyist electronic devices such as the arduino and even Lego mindstorms or the Vex robots. These, and many other products and services, are changing the way society perceives technology, making it accessible to all and no longer the reserve of the industrial environment. However, this perception is also shaping the popularity of subjects being studied within schools, in further and in higher education. School syllabi, ‘in vogue’ subjects and degree level entry requirements are, ironically, all playing a part in this expanding skills shortage. One cannot consider this wider picture, without also


considering the imbalance of gender and other minority groups within the sector. Engineering has not traditionally been an inclusive profession; it has been seen as a man’s role, where strength and dexterity were originally identified as the core skills required for employees working, at times, in dirty and/or dangerous conditions. The Women’s Engineering Society (WES) has been supporting women in the profession for the past 99 years, by identifying opportunities and celebrating the successes of women working across all industrial and educational sectors. The Government and the Engineering Council, through the various professional institutions, are also aware of the gender and diversity issues facing engineering and they are introducing initiatives to try to combat this. However, as the range of engineering sectors has increased, so too has diversity in some workplace environments. For example, across the Loughborough University portfolio of


three engineering schools, encompassing over 25 different engineering or engineering-related degree programmes, the popularity and diversity varies significantly. In line with the IET campaign “#9PercentIsNotEnough”, some of our most traditional programmes do find themselves with low percentages of females on courses. However, on programmes that are underpinned by creativity and flair, such as Product Design Engineering, we observe a much higher ratio of females within a cohort. If one were to distil this complex landscape and come up


with a simple statement to embody the problem, one could argue that we have two main challenges facing us. Firstly how to plug the hole opening up across the engineering sector in the UK due to the emerging and expanding skills gap and secondly how to balance diversity across all engineering sectors. One solution to the first challenge is the careful


development of “intelligent” automation systems to support the existing workforce while providing the plug needed to fill the growing skills gap. It is important to note, though, that job vacancies are not solely being caused by skilled workers retiring and no one with sufficient experience being in a position to take over their roles. Vacancies are also occurring because they are in sectors or environments where people joining the work force simply do not want to enter. By developing intelligent automation solutions, sectors with job vacancies could employ the use of adaptive systems to work alongside their current workforce, enabling the increase in productivity and competitiveness that is required, without causing job losses. These adaptive systems require closed loop control in order for a system to determine a specific course of action during a manufacturing process. Seemingly simple, this is an area of research and integration that is remarkably complex; only through the use of careful requirements definition and system design can one reliably manufacture complex objects within the lead times required for the current aggressive global marketplace. An advantage of this approach is that adaptive automation solutions may be used for the lower skilled and traditionally lower paid roles, thus enabling human operators to become


business network April 2018 43


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