Dr Hilary Leevers -
CEO, Engineering UK
new - e.g. neuroscience or education
– establishing a common language is
incredibly important to getting that
working well,” she said.
The value of project based learning
With the discussion turning to practical
measures that training providers can
take to ensure that skills requirements
are being met, panelists agreed that
project-based learning initiatives that
give students and apprentices realworld
engineering experience
are of major value.
This is at the heart of the
AMRC’s approach, said Louise
Cowling, and has been key to
producing apprentices who
are engaged with the realities
of manufacturing. “If they’ve got
to write about the health and safety
system, for example, they’ve got to go
and talk to somebody and find out what
system they’ve got and why. They can’t
just be passive and write about it in the
abstract……it makes them integrate into
an organisation more than they’d have
to otherwise.”
AME, which is a joint collaboration
between the University of Coventry
and Unipart Manufacturing, has
taken a similar approach said Carl
who know how to weld and form,
and who understand metallurgy and
the fundamentals,” he said. “What
we need to look at is how these data
science technologies can augment the
productivity of those people.”
Southern Water’s area operations
manager Kenan Griffith added that it’s
critical that businesses take the time
to join the gap between the high digital
vision and what this actually means
on a day-to-day level. He said
that his own organisation is at
the early stages of addressing
this through a partnership
with an automation firm
which is creating a training
programme for new people and
existing staff. “All sorts of sexy
automation technology is coming
in,” he said, “but what we need to
understand to apply those sciences in
practice is very tricky and we’re in the
early stages of trying to solve it.”
Engineering UK CEO Dr Hillary
Leevers said that based on what
she’s seen in other sectors, clear
communication is key to pulling
together teams with the right blend of
skills. “If I think of other sectors that
have tried to bridge between an old
established discipline and something
31 April 2020 / www.theengineer.co.uk
Meet the panellists
Richard Jeffers - Technical Director,
RS Northern Europe
James Howarth - Head of Education
Strategy, RS EMEA
Kenan Griffith - Area operations
manager, Southern Water
Louise Cowling - Head of degree
Apprenticeships, AMRC training Centre
Sarah Dhanda - Head of Strategic
Partnerships, Enginuity
Prof Carl Perrin – Director, Institute
for Advanced Manufacturing and
Engineering
Dr Hilary Leevers – CEO, Engineering UK
agreed that industry has to be careful
not to neglect more traditional areas of
expertise.
“There’s no shortcut to just doing the
basics really well,” said RS Component’s
Technical Director Richard Jeffers.
“There’s a danger in this world of
digitisation of forgetting the fact that
if you clean, inspect, lubricate and
tighten a mechanical system, it won’t
fail. I think some of those underpinning
principles are in danger of getting lost if
you just focus purely on the digitisation
bit as being the magic wand.”
Carl Perrin agreed. “If we’re going
to be making cars, aeroplanes and
engines we’re going to need people
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