Up with democratization in engineering

Recently our office received an article by electrical engineer Bernard Ang of Keysight Technologies (previously Hewlett-Packard and Agilent Technologies) about new ways software is helping to advance engineering education for design engineers. If you want to get specifics on Keysight’s tools, visit the 3DCADWorld.com post on this topic from my colleague Rachael Pasini — How digital tools expand engineering educators’ horizons .

It’s one of several stories we’ve recently received on the topic of democratization in automation and manufacturing education.

Of course, software and the internet are core to making engineering knowledge accessible to everyone. Consider the efforts of Kazakhstani computer programmer and creator of the website Sci-Hub.se Alexandra Elbakyan covered in an April 2023 RadioLab podcast . Her crusade to liberate scientific research papers and other technical literature from paywalled internet zones seems to have been at the vanguard of a larger trend. Now over the last few years, numerous academic journals have suddenly come to support open access of their libraries (finding other ways to monetize their editing and publishing work) and in the U.S. by 2026, all federally funded research will be made immediately available to anyone for free.

In fact, democratization in engineering and automation also takes the form of diverse training, degree, and even job types — a topic we cover in the 2023 Design World Diversity issue . Besides jobs needing bachelor’s degrees, the National Science Foundation also defines those requiring no such degree, including:

? Middle-skill occupations requiring STEM certification and on-the-job training — common in installation, maintenance, and production.

? Skilled technical workforce occupations requiring some other specific industry knowledge … positions in which 57% of male STEM workers are employed.

Wherever engineering functions can be properly and safely executed by middle-skill staff, our industry should allow it — especially as software renders a whole host of machines and systems safer and easier than ever to use.

The problem is that (at least in the United States) training programs for such roles and job functions can lag what the industry currently needs from its workers and uses in its facilities.

As a solution, some suppliers have adapted overseas approaches to U.S. training programs and networks. Case in point: Automation company Festo Training & Consulting offers job-specific fluid-power, electronic, PLC, digitalization, and lean-production training programs for maintenance technicians, operators, and production planners as well as shop-floor workers and managers (along with offerings for engineers and leadership). Likewise, the German American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. continues to support a workforce-development apprenticeship program to give high-school graduates as well as working employees dual-vocational training modeled after German approaches to merge local community classroom time with hands-on work experiences. I had a positive Praktikum experience during a college engineering internship in Germany via a Berufsakademie years ago and would love to see new generations of young folks benefit from the same.

Here's a more in-depth article on this topic — How design support and e-learning are addressing labor shortage — assembled by my colleague Mike Santora for the Design World Trends issue in March. An earlier installment of this annual column details of CGI Inc. and others offer programs to maintain technical proficiency of both their application engineers and OEMs as well as other users of their products: Motion-industry educational efforts abound for students and engineers .

Personally, I'm most inspired when hearing about programs in my own state and region ... and maybe you're the same. For years, I've admired the work of Ohio workforce-development expert George Bilokonsky , who I first met a decade ago through the FIRST Robotics Buckeye Regional Competition. If you want a fascinating snapshot of how local communities define their own strengths and objectives to craft employment programs via well-targeted investments, follow George and check out some of his recent LinkedIn shares.

Cuyahoga Community College offers (among other tracks) its own smart manufacturing and mechatronics track ... and along similar lines for Northeast Ohio, Lorain County Community College director of advancement Michael R. Morgenstern champions LCCC programs through which students can earn associate of applied science degrees; take courses on smart automation and smart manufacturing (and the advanced technologies furthering the capabilities of traditional automation and manufacturing approaches); and access an automation lab, Fab Lab, SMART Microsystems Center, and Digital Manufacturing lab for hands-on learning. We at Design World hope to cover more of their work, so stay tuned.

Drop me a line if your own community college or company has a program that constitutes an effort towards democratization in engineering. Better still: If you’re a young person who’s completed a program you felt was particularly well designed, reach out.