Jan 2, 2018

Will Millennials Change Manufacturing?  The largest generation in the U.S. is taking its place in manufacturing — and the experts are betting this tech-savvy cohort is ready to stir things up. By Steve Minter, Industry Week  Dark, dirty and dangerous — mention the 3Ds of old-time manufacturing and HR managers shudder. It’s exactly the image they don’t want the public — or millennials considering careers in manufacturing — to have of the industry. They want to be able to talk about an industry that is attractive and safe, innovative, even cool. So it must gladden the hearts of Lockheed Martin recruiters when Emilee Bianco talks about being “excited” to work at Lockheed Martin Space System’s facility in Sunnyvale, Calif. Bianco, 25, has been working on building solar arrays to power satellites. As a manufacturing engineer, Bianco takes design specifications, puts them into work instructions and then works to ensure that satellite hardware is built correctly. Though she has been working just over a year for Lockheed Martin, she has already been part of a transition to a new type of solar array that uses thin, flexible sheets in place of rigid panels. The flexible arrays produce 50% more power but with 30% less mass. Bianco has also been part of automation efforts where robots are used to place solar cells on panels. Working with Lockheed on space technologies, she says, is “almost a guarantee” that you will be working on cutting-edge projects. Bianco’s generation now makes up the largest in the United States — 83.1 million, according the U.S. Census Bureau versus 75.4 million baby boomers. Not surprisingly, millennials also make up the largest share of the American workforce — one in three workers is a millennial, the Pew Research Center reports. As baby boomers leave the workforce and millennials make up a more significant part of it, many manufacturers believe that this generation will change manufacturing. “Millennials have already started changing the manufacturing and supply chains — and for the better,” says Kathie Karls-Bilski, HR director for 3M Supply Chain. For example, she says that supply chains are becoming more digitized and millennials will foster that change because of their facility with new tech....

Dec 12, 2017

“Retrain Or Retreat: The Next Battlefield For U.S. Manufacturing” By Harold L. (Hal) Sirkin , Forbes The concept of “lifelong learning” has gained widespread popularity in recent decades as a way to keep senior citizens intellectually engaged. But how about lifelong learning as a way to keep people employed, especially those in manufacturing? Think of it as learning for the sake of economic survival. More than one expert is predicting that robots and artificial intelligence will make work all but obsolete in the future. “Some entrepreneurs such as Tesla Inc. founder Elon Musk predict so little human work will be left that a universal social safety net will be needed to maintain economic order,” the Wall Street Journal’s Vanessa Fuhrmans reported last month. Such notions are gaining currency. For several years now, various publications, ranging from The Guardian and The Atlantic to Forbes, have been publishing stories about the possibilities of a future “world without work.” This is somewhat misleading, as it’s not work that may become obsolete, but rather our skills, as the digital revolution speeds ahead. Unfortunately, the current educational system, which was designed for the generation that came of age during the 1940s and 1950s, and for the baby boomers that followed, can’t fix this problem. The only way to fix it is to take the words “lifelong learning” seriously, even literally, and embrace continuing education as an integral and necessary part of our adult lives. The nature of work clearly is changing—and dramatically so. The pace of change is increasing as well, and may even accelerate. In such an environment, keeping up will require more than occasional refresher courses and attendance at professional development seminars. If you were starting a career 40 years ago, you probably believed—correctly, in many cases—that you’d be able to do whatever you were trained to do for your entire life. That’s no longer true. Today, technologies that were considered science fiction just a decade ago—3D printing, artificial intelligence (AI), drones and driverless vehicles, among others—are becoming realities. And there’s more to come. Our educational system was structured to maintain the status quo. Students spend 12 years in the classroom—with perhaps an additional two years at a community college or in an apprenticeship program, or four...

Aug 11, 2016

“5 Communications Skills Needed to Advance an Engineering Career” By Mitch Maiman, Design News There was a time when engineers could work within companies and have minimal (or even bad) communication skills. While it is not necessarily important for engineers to become great public speakers or authors, it is increasingly important for them to possess effective communication skills. Here’s why. Engineers Need to Sell Engineers do not necessarily need to become card-carrying sales people, however, they do need to be able to sell their ideas. In interactive discussions with technical and management team members, or even with clients, it is necessary to present your story well. Doing so helps convince others of the merit of your “case,” and furthermore, builds confidence in your perspective as a professional. It is about relationship building; an engineer who can prepare and deliver a clear, concise, and believable message will come across well. Engineers Need to Capture User and Client Insights for Specification Documents Often in the aerospace and government contracting worlds, product requirements and needs are clearly, and often completely, defined in specifications and requirements documents. In the commercial, industrial, and consumer product worlds, this is often not the case, and engineers need to alone or with a diverse team, meet with prospective or current clients to extract the opportunities and needs. In such situations, engineers will often be communicating with others who do not share their perspective and technical competence. Extracting information requires good listening skills and the ability to translate what is heard into technical requirements. Engineers Need to Create Clear Written Content Engineers must craft clear, concise written documents, emails, and presentation materials to be effective at their jobs. Be careful not to use jargon and technical terminology, especially if the receiver of the information is not a technically oriented person. The engineer needs to step into the mindset of the audience/readers and write in a form that gets to the point quickly and speaks in a language that is readily understood by the audience. Engineers Need to Present in Front of Groups As an engineer advances, either in-line or into management, it will increasingly be important to them to be able to present...

Aug 4, 2015

By Jack Karsten and Darrell M. West, Brookings Advanced manufacturing has been identified by industry, government, and academia as an important driver of future economic growth in the U.S. According to its proponents, advanced manufacturing will provide high-paying jobs in regions that suffered from an exodus of traditional manufacturing jobs in the late 20th century. In order to fulfill this promise, the American workforce needs technical training in new manufacturing technologies. Ensuring that workforce skills keep pace with changing technology was one of the topics discussed at the 2015John Hazen White Forum on Public Policy, held at the Brookings Institution on July 9. Not your father’s manufacturing job For much of the 20th Century, manufacturing provided stable incomes for many workers with only a high school education. As these jobs have increasingly moved offshore in search of lower-wage labor, a new kind of manufacturing job must take their place. As industry adopts increasingly sophisticated technologies, new manufacturing jobs require more advanced skills than are available at the high school level. The current gap between worker skills and industry needs has resulted in an estimated two million vacant manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Filling these jobs requires new mechanisms for training workers in advanced manufacturing technologies. Advanced manufacturing covers a whole host of new industrial processes that improve upon traditional methods in quality, speed, and cost.High-performance computing harnesses substantial computing power to simulate real-world conditions in a virtual environment, allowing for relatively cheaper product testing. Additive manufacturing techniques like 3D printing provide a way to assemble customized products without having to reconfigure any machinery. Printing a product layer by layer also eliminates the waste that results from “subtractive” processes like milling, which sculpts a product from a larger block of material. These technologies dramatically reduce the time between designing and building a product, but mastering them requires specialized workforce training. Changing the discussion The panelists at the John White Forum spoke about the need for changing the public discussion of manufacturing and workforce preparation. Based on the history of dwindling manufacturing employment in the U.S., few parents want their children to train for manufacturing jobs. There is an insistence that every student attends a four-year college in spite of more flexible and...

Mar 25, 2015

By Jacob Beningo, EDN Network There are few things more discouraging to an engineer than pouring their heart, sweat and tears into a project only to have it fail. Failure can and does provide insights and growth experiences to those involved but the loss of time and effort can strike a devastating blow. There are many reasons that an embedded systems project can fail but there are seven key indicators that a project is dying a slow and silent death. #7 – Team turnover  Every company experiences employee or contractor turn over but excessive turnover of key personal can be a leading indicator that a project is doomed for failure. There are many reasons why turnover can have a detrimental effect on the project. First, it has a psychological effect on other team members that can decrease productivity. Second, the loss of key personal can result in historical and critical information being lost forever, which will slow down the development. Finally, replacing team members requires training and bringing up to speed a new team member. This can be a distraction that takes others away from development work, with the end result an increase in development costs and delivery timeframe. #6 – Go stop go syndrome There is an old saying that children are taught; “Don’t cry wolf.” The saying is a warning to not raise false alarms. This warning is ignored in projects that have a “GO! STOP! GO!” cycle. A manager, client, or some other entity pushes his team hard, claiming that the project has to get out the door by a certain date. Developers work weekends and put in extra effort. Then, just as quickly as the big push came the project is stopped dead in its tracks. Months later it is once again an emergency. “Hurry we have to ship by X!” And the same thing happens again. The repeated urgency followed by stopping the project that is later urgently started again has a psychological effect on the development team. The developers come to no longer believe that there is any urgency. In fact, they start to get the mindset that this project isn’t a serious project and that it will...