Graham R. Mackenzie

This article analyses industry’s requirements o f the education system and seeks to identijy thefdctors which inzuence industry’s long-term requirements for the education and training o f its employees. It then identijes how thesefdctors impact on the UK education and training system, with particular emphasis on further and higher education.

he interface between industry and the education and training system is becoming increasingly complex. Both sides of the U industry/education &vide are strugghng to

face up to the seemingly inexorable demand for better skded people whdst facing commercial and political pressures to reduce costs and increase throughput.

Many of the arguments about industry’s require- ments of the education system and the educational establishment’s ability to meet these requirements are well rehearsed. However, much of the argument generates more heat than light and both sides of the divide spend much time either defending the status quo or establishing unachievable criteria for their people and skills’ requirements.

This article analyses industry’s requirements of the education system.

The drivers

There are three main imperatives which influence the development of industry in the world today These are the globahsation of industry, technological develop- ment and the move to product customisation.

The globahsation ofindustry and markets impacts on companies large and small. The effect is best illustrated in UK terms by the figures for engineering output, which show that the proportion of engineering products directly exported from the UK has increased from 42% ten years ago to a figure above 60% today. Indeed, over 50% of these exports now go to our EU partners, illustrating the impact which the single market has had on the UK engineering industry. In

parallel with thls growth in international tradmg has been the emergence of the so-called Asian Tigers- Korea, Taiwan and the other Pacific Rim countries- which now compete in global markets for engineered and consumer products.

This process of globahsation has led to a concentra- tion of the number of players in many industry sectors. It is most obvious in aerospace where, following the acquisition of McDonnell Douglas by Boeing, there are now only two main suppliers of commercial airfi-ames and three main suppliers of commercial aero engines in the western world. Even quite small companies find themselves as one of perhaps three or four players in their global niche and this has sipficant implications for the cahbre and abhties of the people they employ in a small-company environment.

Loolung to the future, e-commerce is going to bring about significant changes for the buying and selling of industrial and consumer products. E-commerce d provide world-wide access for buyers, who wdl be able to compare product specifications and prices from vendors across the globe; t h s may well prejudce the traditional approach of sales agents and dstributors in numerous countries and drive the concept of globahsation even further.

The impact of the second driver, technological development, is well established. Every industry faces the challenge of the increasing pace of new product innovation. It is common knowledge that products such as mobile ’phones, whch were unknown 20 years ago, are now in world-wide consumpr use. Equally, in the industrial environment, we have a seen a massive change from the heyday of the trahtional ‘metal

ENGINEERING SCIENCE AND EDUCATION JOURNAL DECEMBER 1999

268

bashng’ industries to today, when electronics and systems engineering are increasingly important facets of industrial products.

Thrdly, product customisation is starting to make a significant impact on consumer products manufacture in particular. Increasingly, manufacturers are faced with the problem of product diversity and the growing demand from consumers for products which are tailored to their particular needs. We are moving from an era of mass-produced goods to one where, in the ultimate, individual products have to pass down the production line.

Evolution of manufacturing technology

The impact of globahsation and of product custom- isation has had particular impact on the evolution of manufacturing technology. In the space of less than a century we have moved from tradtional crafz activities to agile manu- facturing. Mass production, which was stimulated by the requirements of the emerging automobile industry in the 1920s, probably reached its apogee in the 1950s when the Japanese, under the influence of Deming, recognised the need to develop it into the processes now known as lean production. More recently, the consumer pressure for customisation of the product has led to the process of mass customisation and, as products and markets fragment still further, the emergence of so-called agile manufacturing, in whch scenario companies become increasing flexible and dy- namic.

The other overriding in- fluence on manufacturing d be the pressures fkom the market on costs and time-scale. The government’s Foresight Manufacturing 2020 Panel has been loolung to the long-term future for UK manufacturing industry and has drawn some starthng conclusions. The view emerging is that by 2020 the

implications for the entire design and development process whdst a target of one-tenth the manufacturing time has tremendous implications for a company’s approach to resourcing, manufacturing processes and contracting out elements of the manufacturing process.

The principal implication, however, is the need for increasingly sophisticated manufacturing control systems.

People implications

These pressures and influences on industry have tremendous implications for the people industry employs.

There is an increasing requirement for slulls as the products and the systems that are manufactured and sold become more sophsticated and as the manu-

By 2020 the manuffaeturioag process

wiou have to be deOivering at one-third

the cost and io0

one tenth off the menMffaefcMrioag

time

facturing process becomes increasingly automated. In the UK, there is a particular deficit of technicians and people trained to NVQ Level 3 (junior technician and s u e d craftsman level). At the same time, there is pressure for employees to demonstrate greater flexibhty both in terms of their workmg time and their wdhngness to relocate and travel as part of their work. It will, for example, be increasingly rare for graduate engineers who are employed by multinational companies not to have spent a substantive part of their career development working overseas and this has implications for their linguistic and intercultural skills.

Particularly important in a small-company environment, is the increasing requirement for employees to have good inter- personal SUS and ‘life SUS’. More and more work is undertaken in small groups where interpersonal s k d s are important. People involved in global businesses d have to demonstrate the self-reliance necessary to work away from their home base and, quite possibly, interface with custo- mers at senior levels.

manufacturing process, whatever the product, will The implication for recruitment of people into have to be delivering at one-thrd the cost and in one industry has been studed by the Engineering tenth of the manufacturing time. The pressures on cost Employers’ Federation (EEF) in a document which are well-known to all in industry but the radical they published in 1996. This document, ‘A new shortening of time to market is an aspect which is less millennium of learning’, reported on a survey of the well understood and d need much attention in views of opinion formers as to the type of recruit coming years. Reducing the time to market has industry would need in 2010--0nly eleven years away.

ENGINEERING SCIENCE AND EDUCATION JOURNAL DECEMBER 1999

269

The consensus was that at least 50% of recruits into the engineering industry will have to have some form of quahfication at higher education level (a degree or HNC/HND) and a further 25% d require an NVQ Level 3 qualification.

Equally clear was the need to upslull the existing workforce. It should not be forgotten that two thirds of the workforce who will be with us in 2010 are already workmg in industry today. The technicians we currently employ d require support from their employers to upgrade their slulls and qualifications to degree, or even masters degree, level and, similarly, many current craft people will need upskilling and reskilling to undertake technician jobs.

Issues for higher education

This requirement to recruit better qualified individuals into the industry and to upgrade the skdls of the existing employees has important implications for hgher and further education in the UK.

The issues for hgher education have been well aired in recent years through the publication of the ‘National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education: Higher education in the learning society’ (July 1997) by Lord Dearing and the Engineering Council’s moves to revise their ‘Standards and routes to registration’ (SARTOR) document.

There have to be questions about the type and quahty of degrees being offered when the chorus of complaint from industrial recruiters is heard. Many people question whether the rather elitist approach to engineering education specified by SARTOR does anymore than underpin the training and qualifications of the relatively small nuniber of chartered professional engineers required by industry. The real demand is for higher technicians who, these days, increasingly come through the university route and require broader based and more applications-oriented degrees than those undertaken by young people pursuing the more academic chartered-engineer courses.

Employers feel that there is a lack of rigour in many university courses and applaud the recommendations in the Dearing Review to tighten the degree standards and to require programme specifications so as to ensure that degree courses are tailored to the requirements of industry as well as to those of undergraduates.

In thls process, the requirements of small employers should not be overlooked. Increasingly, undergraduates go out of hgher education into the small-company employment sector. Many of these smal-company employers have little experience of recruiting and training graduates so relationshps between higher education and small companies need to be reviewed to better facilitate this aspect of the recruitment process.

Just as important, higher education institutions have a vital role to play in the development and delivery of courses to upskdl the existing workforce. There are a number of good examples of collaborative programmes between companies and particular higher educational

institutions which are dn-ected at meeting the requirement for lifelong learning. This aspect of higher education needs rahcal expansion wMst maintaining the quality and standards of the learning delivered.

Issues for fuflher education

Further education (FE) has a vital role in meeting industry’s requirement for people quahfied to NVQ Levels 3 and 4. It has an equally key role in delivering the training required to upskill industry’s existing workforce.

Much of the development in this area will be influenced by the Government’s proposals for a University for Industry and the development of a lifelong learning policy. However, it is clear that in an engineering context, given the relatively limited numbers of people undergoing engineering training and development, there will be a requirement for local centres of excellence in engineering slulls. Further education has been seriously underfunded in the UK in recent years and it is better to focus the linllted funds available for engineering on a smaller number of FE institutions so as to ensure the quality and excellence of the engineering training delivered.

Conclusion

Industry is rapidly changing as it reacts to the pressures of technological innovation, globahsation and an increasingly sophsticated buyer in the market. These influences are leading to a more dynamic and agile manufacturing sector in the UK whch, in turn, is placing increasing demands on the education system for the skilled people it needs to compete in global markets in the 21st century.

The pressures on industry are understood, but it is far from clear that the implications for its people requirements have been properly fed through to education and training providers at all levels in the system.

There are some structural impediments to collaboration between industry and hgher and further education, and political pressures to expand the throughput in the higher education system may not be helping the process. Nevertheless, there is a growing constructive dialogue which should lead to the better tailoring of the output from the education system to industry’s needs in the early part of the next century.

0 IEE: 1999

Graham Mackenzie, OBE, FREng is Chief Executive ofASW Holdings plc, the Cardiff-based steel maker. He was formerly Director General of the Engineering Employers’ Federation and is an IEE member and past Chairman of the IEE Manufacturing Division. This article is ba;ed on a presentation which was given to the SET Open Forum which was held on 3rd June 1999.

ENGINEERING SCIENCE AND EDUCATION JOURNAL DECEMBER 1999

270