Mike
Duke, president and CEO of WalMart, said at a recent manufacturing
conference that a worsening shortage of engineers in the US as well as a
decline in the overall quality of STEM education will make it hard for
the sector to achieve a resurgence.
WalMart CEO Mike Duke
The shortage in skilled and experienced
engineers is particularly acute in the fields of industrial and
mechanical engineering – the very fields which pertain directly to the
manufacturing sector.
These difficulties are being further
exacerbated by the aging of the workforce and the departure of
experienced personnel, leaving companies unable to fill engineering
positions as long-term employees reach the retirement threshold.
“As a country, not just WalMart, we have
a shortage in that area,” said Duke during a panel discussion at the
WalMart US Manufacturing Summit in Orlando, Florida. “We need more
science and more engineers to help us…build the foundation for a
manufacturing resurgence.”
These sentiments appear strange coming
from the head of the company responsible for spearheading the
outsourcing trend which led to the demise of much of America’s
manufacturing sector, and its wholesale relocation overseas to
developing economies such as China.
Duke, however, who has a background in
industrial engineering, reiterated his belief that the US should remain
the party responsible for the design work which underpins the
manufacturing process.
“I have a personal bias, being an
engineer myself, but we also need those that can design the factories,
design the processes, the technology,” he said.
Duke’s concerns about the impact of a
lack of engineers and skilled employees on US manufacturing is
vindicated by the findings of a recent survey by the Manufacturing
Institute – a Washington DC-based industry body. In that survey, 42 per
cent of manufacturing executives reported that their companies were
being “negatively affected” by either shortages or skill deficiencies in
engineering support staff.
Much of the problem is the result of
defects in the training given to budding engineers, including inadequate
curricula and a want of real-world experience among teaching staff.
Shahrukh Irani, director of IE
researcher with Swiss manufacturer Hoerbiger and formerly an engineering
teacher at Ohio State University, told Industry Market Trends that
university engineering curricula need to be completely revamped.
“The curricula of today have to be re-imagined from the ground up,”
Irani said. “If we are going to turn around manufacturing, we have to
have IEs who also know computer science, robotics, wireless, mobile
computing and flexible manufacturing. They have to know how to set up
and run a factory.”- See more at: http://sourceable.net/lack-of-engineers-hinders-us-manufacturing-walmart-ceo/#!
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