The core message of Measuring Up 2008 (produced by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education) is that despite successes, our higher education performance is not commensurate with the future needs of our society and our economy.
How can manufacturing shore up the levies of the impending knowledge and capability crisis? Some companies have already started to implement innovative systems to capture their existing institutional knowledge before it walks out the door, as well as partnering with educational institutions to support the creation of new programs to advance maintenance and reliability education and practices within the academic and industrial communities.
The University of Tennessee's College of Engineering and its industry-supported Maintenance & Reliability Center (MRC) offer several options to undergraduate engineering students (and prospective employers) in the area of reliability and maintenance engineering including a Minor in Reliability and Maintainability Engineering, a Maintenance and Reliability Engineering Certificate, and Maintenance and Reliability Engineering Internships.
Internships Produce Surprising Results
While internships are often viewed as more beneficial to the student than the sponsoring company, MRC interns are most certainly giving as much as they are receiving - identifying significant cost-savings in a very short time span. Michael T. Saale, UT Graduate Student, Mechanical Engineering, just finished an internship at DuPont TiO2 Technologies in New Johnsonville, TN, where using Weibull Analysis (read a detailed process description here) he identified and was able to correct a chronic pipe erosion problem leading to a conservative savings estimate of $120,000 this year alone with expected additional savings and heightened safety improvements. (Read a full internship report of additional project results and documented savings at DuPont TiO2 Technologies as reprinted here from the MRC NEWSLETTER, October, 2008.)
Like DuPont and MRC, Meridium is working to connect academics with industry to find creative and innovative ways of solving problems for the manufacturing community. In addition to being an MRC member, Meridium is working jointly with Virginia Tech's Computer Science Department on a research project on agile software usability funded by a National Science Foundation Grant. To better support the research, Meridium employs VT interns and works closely with VT professors.
In the immediate future there will be a shortage of technically-trained professionals, potentially threatening the overall innovation potential of the U.S. If manufacturing organizations wish to remain innovative and competitive they must confront the coming knowledge and capability shortage. Through the support of higher educational organizations like MRC, manufacturing companies can shape their own future workforce capabilities - this, along with utilizing systems to capture critical existing workforce knowledge before it walks out the door, will be keys to long-term competitiveness.
(Click here to learn more about the MRC internship program.)
