New ways to manufacture products offer designers huge advantages, but many cling instead to tried-and-tested methods. Education is key, writes Stephen Holmes, and class is in session at smart organisations
Trade show season is here and exhibition halls are packed full of the latest hardware for manufacturing: 3D printers bigger than my car, CNC machines bigger than my flat, and injection moulding machines that need their own postcode.
The latest and greatest equipment holds the power to transform what’s possible – what can be made and the efficiency with which it can be delivered. But pack hundreds of new technologies into a cavernous hall and the sector quickly becomes daunting.
Experienced industry heads often criticise graduate designers making their first steps in employment for not knowing enough about manufacturing processes and workflows, but I’ve been there when those same ruddy-faced gents encounter the cutting edge of manufacturing technology and even their heads start to wobble.
In short, a workshop education dating back 30 years is paltry preparation for the demands of Industry 4.0.
New kit, new challenges
Plenty of companies are investing in new kit, but new kit brings new challenges – hence why we see large manufacturing companies opening future-focused ‘labs’ and forming partnerships with universities and research centres such as the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland. These companies are doing whatever it takes to de-risk adoption of new technology.
Much of this work involves unshackling the next generation of employees. Young workers bring with them a curiosity and fearlessness that was long ago beaten out of their more senior colleagues.
Granting them freedom to experiment can result in managed failure, but also exciting discoveries. Either way, the company gets new learnings, new intellectual property and new competitive advantage.
Nothing is more fearless, after all, than an infant wiping its sticky paws over the screen of an iPad. Children are drawn to screens like moths. You watch as the pennies continuously drop as they open an app, play a video, or lock you out of your Internet banking service.
Compare this behaviour to that of the same child’s grandmother, who perpetually worries that some important data or service might be erased forever with a misdirected finger-swipe, and you see what I mean. Age can bring caution, even fear.
Freedom, by contrast, is an attribute that manufacturing desperately needs, but manufacturing hardware is often expensive, not simply in terms of acquisition cost, but also the impact of downtime.
AI-enabled software and automation may play their part in keeping things from going wrong, but educating a new generation about manufacturing is going to be key. And, as I’ve previously lamented in this column, the workshops of our Design & Technology classrooms are at risk of disappearing completely.
Getting educated
It’s time for the manufacturing industry, as well as the companies that build and sell new machines and software, to begin filling the education gap.
This is a topic I recently discussed with Mark Gray, one of the team behind Universal Robots’ new training centre in Sheffield. This centre is equipped with a full suite of the brand’s cobots (collaborative robots) and anyone, young or old, can try them out and get trained on adding automation to manufacturing workloads.
This approach is informed by the company’s roots in Denmark, where secondary schools are routinely furnished with a cobot and students get to experience the technology at a much earlier age.
Universal Robots offers a two-day course to teach the basics around programming and using its cobots, from desktop pickand- pack units to 16kg payload workhorses.
This grassroots level is where change can really happen — not only for apprentices, the lifeblood of floor-level manufacturing and engineering, but also for those who already have long careers under their belts, the grannies with iPads in this equation.
I was once told that if a designer doesn’t understand how something can be made, then they will struggle to create the best possible design. That makes perfect sense to me
A 48-week apprenticeship in manufacturing might be pointless for a designer, but a couple of days here and there to keep abreast of how new technologies function, what they offer and where they fit? That might be priceless.
And it’s not just robotics. How about 48 hours learning about PCB 3D printers, engine-block AM sand cores, boat hull-printing LFAM robots, tiny antenna producing micro-polymer 3D printers. Or perhaps just a better understanding of what the latest cutting, turning, milling and grinding machines are capable of delivering in 2025?
I was once told that if a designer doesn’t understand how something can be made, then they will struggle to create the best possible design. That makes perfect sense to me.
With manufacturing moving so rapidly and technologies that were once considered to be ‘fringe’ now maturing to become qualified methods of mass production, we all need to be those students who sit up and take notice in class.
This article first appeared in DEVELOP3D Magazine
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