When I first began work as an engineer, “skills” referred to things having to do with hands and eyes, learned through practice. Now “skills” seem to also imply competence with mathematics, science, and such things as computer programming, typically learned through formal schooling. So maybe we are finally realizing the advantages of bringing theory and practice back together a bit. It’s about time.
In my next blog, I am going to talk a bit about a group of people at Stanford that call themselves the Product Realization Laboratory, and are led by Professor David Beach, that have been emphasizing this for years. They are part of the Design Group in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and if you like a quick glimpse at what they do, look at their web site here. But to my mind, they are undervalued in the academy, even though the students who go through their program are just what the U.S. manufacturing industry needs.
We are not going to get these “adequately skilled” people unless we make some major changes in our industries and educational institutions, and embarrassingly enough, some of them seem to require turning the clock back a bit.
I have these “adequate” skills, but I was fortunate enough to have several resources at my disposal, all now rare. First of all I grew up on a farm which included a machinist uncle (four year apprenticeship in those days) and a blacksmith grandfather. Much of the equipment and many of the tools on the farm were to some extent made, and all were maintained, by my uncle and grandfather, with me being allowed (required) to help. I did not go to a school system oriented toward preparing people for college, but I not only took a fair amount of math and science (because I liked it) and took courses in wood shop and metal shop (including what was then called mechanical drawing) through high school. My high school, incidentally, included a very broad array of vocational programs ranging from such things as auto shop and machine shop through printing shop, painting shop, and plaster shop to boys foods and boys tailoring. Thinking I wanted to be a machinist, I worked my final summer in a large machine shop as a flunky, despite a bit of pressure to work on the farm
My counselor sent me off to Caltech, which at that time was quite active in building large instruments and included the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (still the case). Summers I worked in the same large shop, but gradually was moved into their small engineering section (which was made up of people who had “come up through the ranks” as machinists (no graduates of four year engineering programs— these were perhaps the “adequately skilled” people in demand right now).
When I graduated from Caltech, companies were typically offering two year training programs for their new engineers, in which they would be moved around through several activities and would learn company-related skills. I almost went to work for a machine tool company named Warner Swasey, in which I would have been hired as an engineer at the appropriate salary, but would have spent my first two years working in their very impressive shops. Instead I went to Shell Oil Company as a production engineer, but even though I graduated first in engineering in my class, and was being paid a satisfying salary as an engineer, I began working in the field as a roustabout (pick and shovel), then was part of a well work-over crew, and then a member of a drilling crew. I left after a few months for active duty in the Air Force, but intended to return and finish my two years at a series of other training activities designed to help me apply what I had learned at Caltech to the company— in other words to learn the oil game. I never did return to Shell, but this was not uncommon, and companies seemed to be willing to conduct training programs whether people left or not, on the grounds that industry in general would benefit.
It takes a lot of work and time to acquire the range of knowledge and experience desired in future manufacturing workers. Schools are being expected to produce students that do better on math and science tests, but these tests do not measure ability to apply the knowledge. Industries expect schools to deliver graduates who already have a good sense of what they like to call “the real world” without much training. Both have to do better. And working in manufacturing must be made a more appealing career in the U.S. Would you rather have your kid work in a factory, or in financial services?
Recent Comments