He also asked what they would tell a new engineering grad about today’s industrial job environment. Here are a few comments:
“Don’t accept that all manufacturing jobs will be sent offshore,” said one respondent. “There are plenty of opportunities and strong business cases to manufacture in the U.S. and to do so competitively. Look for automation as a method to make higher quality and better products. Not just hardware automation, but process automation.”
To improve education, another survey respondent thought curriculum planners should teach “the business side of engineering; when I completed school, I had very little experience or knowledge of how to complete a cost estimate for a task or project. I am confident that most graduating engineers know that most decisions have monetary implications, but they don’t have a good base of how to determine a value for that.”
“As far as what I would tell a new grad about manufacturing…. Well, I would want them to know that just about everything they touch was the innovation of someone who ultimately used manufacturing as the means to get it in the hands of those who need it. Food, clothing, cars, homes, medicine, city infrastructure, water, power and this list goes on,” said a third respondent. “If you like innovation, manufacturing is the place to be. I know some very remarkable people who are now running major organizations that started in manufacturing.”
Further results can be found in “Survey Says…Educating and Training the Industrial Workforce, Part Two” (click here). Add your voice to the discussion through AW’s LinkedIn group, accessible online via bit.ly/automationworld
