where will the next generation of engineers come from

[mike mcdermidParticipant @mikemcdermid41977]

I was reading the George H Thomas book recentley, my question of where the next generation of engineers or thinkers even will come from.What will the next generation of digital documents contain?

[mike mcdermidParticipant @mikemcdermid41977]

just pondering

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

My stepson has just started an engineering apprenticeship. First lesson, the difference between first and third angle and I've had to lend him my drawing board as they have to learn to draw real engineering drawings on paper!

Neil

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Maybe like our Apprentice, after five years and time off for College and he passed his exams and then legged it to work with Connex on the Railway signalling equipment, what a waste of time that was.

Needless to say we did not take on another one.

Clive

[ChrisHParticipant @chrish]

Humm, maybe a change in company policy is called for then Clive. When I did my 'apprenticeship' with a shipping company as a marine engineer back in the 1960's, a couple of months before my aprenticeship finished I had to sign a contract to stay and work for the company for two years, otherwise my apprenticeship was not signed off as completed. Ok, they had you by the short and curlies, but in their position I would have done exactly the same and got a return on the company's investment.

Chris.

Edited By ChrisH on 22/09/2012 21:45:48

[Bill PudneyParticipant @billpudney37759]

I started my apprenticeship in 1964, at the interview I well remember having it explained to me that the aircraft industry ran a more or less common apprenticeship scheme and they didn't discourage people to leave at the end of their time. The theory was that there would be a sort of circular movement across the industry. Thus spreading the knowledge

Of course succesive Governments put paid to that by getting rid of industry.

Back to the subject "Where will the next generation of Engineers come from" the answer is clearly China.

cheers

Bill

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

People are looking at this from the wrong point.

Engineers as we know them, and that's us collectively, are dinosaurs.

Lets look at this logically, the vast amount of manufacturing is done overseas and so manufacturing engineers are also overseas.

Where this country scores in in development and technological innovation and leaves the run of the mill manufacturing to countries that can better do this, usually a financial decision.

It's no accident that the vast majority of the Formulae 1 workshops and development are in this country, even the foreign based ones.

Take a look at Formula 1 in Schools

http://www.f1inschools.co.uk/

Whole new ball game and it's not just about designing, the whole school has to be involved from getting support and sponsorship thru accounts to building and competing.

The 'new' engineers are invisible to us, just like they treat us for what we are – dinosaurs.

Just like the Arc Euro thread on sales and shows, the world is moving on and won't wait.

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

"where will the next generation of engineers come from"…

Sounds like someone, needs sitting down for "The Talk"…..

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

The next generation of engineers will come from India

The next generation of Doctors etc too will come from overseas

 

Like the outsourcing of manufacturing overseas, the outsourcing of education and skills to cheap labour mass production style economies is already happening

Corporations and immigration rules keep a lid on wage rates

Edited By Ady1 on 23/09/2012 00:30:44

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

If they come from India or China they won't be the same as has gone before.

For a start they will undersatnd computer pprograms far in advance of what we are used to.

In fact engineering is a very wide base, manufacturing, software, development.

Engineeres design computer chips and build the machines to make them, how many here who regard themselves as engineers can do this or have eve seen this.

As I said previously times are changing.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Some things are becoming more efficient, others are not

Outright Investment is well down on the 1960s when we built things like Concorde, the SR71 and the Apollo Rocket virtually by hand

On the other hand we're pretty amazing at making things cheaper and more efficient for mass market purposes

 

Also:

Is there anything around at the moment which isn't originally sourced from the 1960s?

New ideas and concepts?

Nanotechnology looks pretty kewl

Genetic manipulation?

 

I have no idea how much R+D is currently carried out compared with back then

I do know that the US Dept of Defence spent mind boggling amounts of money on R+D because of the cold war

Edited By Ady1 on 23/09/2012 01:22:11

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

For a start they will understand computer programs far in advance of what we are used to

—

I'm sceptical

DOS was dropped because so few people could program well in machine code and the drive for higher level languages started with windows 3.1(ugh)

The original DOS coders were stonemasons, highly skilled, very expensive and hard to control

So they invented higher level languages and replaced stomemasons with brickies( c, c+, c++ etc) because this meant software, like brick houses, was easier to mass produce AND maintain

Nowadays some of the higher level stuff is virtually plug-in sections of a wall, with any wiring and plumbing already built in

 

For pure research and speed they still use machine code, I recently read that graphics cards were becoming very popular for linear maths and research

 

The other issue is bloatware

DOS could do everything at blinding speed with 4Megabytes

Windows is what now? 1500 Megabytes, 1.5 Gigabytes

Things "look good" because of advancements in chip speed, graphics cards and memory, However anything written in DOS on our current hardware runs at jaw dropping speed

I think the military and Healthcare industries still do a lot of machine code, mainly because these are "critical" applications

 

Edited By Ady1 on 23/09/2012 01:33:07

[dcostaParticipant @dcosta]

Hello Ady1!
Good morning.

On the matter of developing new programming languages, please read the interview given by Mr. Bjarn Stroustrap **LINK** , the C++ creator he gave January 1998.

Hope you find it fun.

Best regards
Dias Costa

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

I think what we are really looking at here is the Apprentice/man who can approach a task with certain background Knowledge and complete his part of the task whether it is using a file or soldering a PCB together and better still be able to use a lathe/Mill and understand Metrology.

The extra knowledge is an understanding of materiels and application of types of tooling that is needed.

There are 'Niche' trades where a lot of mechanical knowhow is not needed and is quite specialized and offer welding and metal cutting of various types as they support other trades.

After all, someone who takes Engineering as a trade/Career will follow a disciplne, but the basic tenants remain of getting your hands dirty and getting experience.

This part is where experienced Engineers pass on that knowhow to eager apprentices ! You dont get it all from books.

Clive

[Eric CoxParticipant @ericcox50497]

Just a couple of points

"Maybe like our Apprentice, after five years and time off for College and he passed his exams and then legged it to work with Connex on the Railway signalling equipment, what a waste of time that was."

I can recall a time when companies offered apprenticeships but couldn't gaurantee a job at the end of it. Isn't it strange how companies attitudes change when the boot is on the other foot.

Secondly

"My stepson has just started an engineering apprenticeship. First lesson, the difference between first and third angle and I've had to lend him my drawing board as they have to learn to draw real engineering drawings on paper!"

Shouldn't this have been taught at school?.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

ello Ady1!
Good morning.
On the matter of developing new programming languages, please read the interview given by Mr. Bjarn Stroustrap **LINK** , the C++ creator he gave January 1998.

—-

LOL

The biggest problem is… no-one will ever be sure if it's a spoof or not

 

If its true it certainly helps to explain why all those UK Government projects for an integrated NHS system or an Integrated Welfare system have massive overruns or go t*ts up

Glad I stuck with BASIC and assembly

Edited By Ady1 on 23/09/2012 10:05:34

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

No you are still looking at it from your own stand point.

Those times are gone. Get Fridays paper and look for centre lathe turner or miller under situations vacant.

That trade doesn't exist now.

And as regards software i didn't mean the actual programming although the writers must use it, what i meant was the software that the newer engineers will have access to.

Tip of the ice berg but look at these images.

What a few years ago would have been next to impossible or at least 5 figures has now come down to hobby level.

This is what I mean about access to computer programs.

John S.

[Tony Pratt 1Participant @tonypratt1]

Centre lathe turner or miller may not exist any more but I am bombarded every day with online vacancies for CNC Millers & Turners mainly north of Birmingham or south coast. The next generation of Engineers are out there just waiting to be called on, instead of employing foreigners how about training our younger generation and giving them self respect and a skill to take them onwards in their life. Successive goverments really are not getting it that keeping millions of people at home doing sweet FA and getting paid for it leads this country no where but down.

Tony

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

We've become lazy in the western world. We all want the best cars, televisions, clothes and mobile phones (best of everything really), but it's someone else's job to make them.

We're mainly living off the backs of poorer nations at the moment such as China and India, but it's interesting that the Germans have no fear of getting their hands dirty and are in large part, keeping others afloat because of their sustained hard work.

Martin.

[Ed DuffnerParticipant @edduffner79357]

It's not just the younger generation needing skills. I'm 47 now and trying to get into some kind of trainee engineering role. I look at job listings daily and see a few for experienced manual miller/turner and for each of those there's at least 5 or 6 CNC miller/turner jobs.

Trouble is even when you apply for something the middle-man agencies and employment bureaus aren't interested, they don't call you back, some of them have a can't-be-bothered attitude if you speak to them on the phone.

[Tony Pratt 1Participant @tonypratt1]

Posted by blowlamp on 23/09/2012 11:56:47:

We've become lazy in the western world. We all want the best cars, televisions, clothes and mobile phones (best of everything really), but it's someone else's job to make them.

We're mainly living off the backs of poorer nations at the moment such as China and India, but it's interesting that the Germans have no fear of getting their hands dirty and are in large part, keeping others afloat because of their sustained hard work.

Martin.

It's a massive generalisation to say we are lazy in the western world, I love to get my hands dirty and I know what hard work is all about! The reason we are using China, India etc for nearly all our "consumer items" is because they are cheap,cheap, cheap. I worked in Germany and they are no better than us and in the 70's used Turkish labour for all the crap jobs. I have said this before that the Germans support Germany and the British support eveyone else.

Tony

[Tony MartyrParticipant @tonymartyr14488]

The next generation of engineers, like the last one, will come from our universities. What proportion will be British by birth is a question that will be govened by the standard of pre-university science and maths education and the financial models available to different students. As a product of a 1960s student apprenticeship I know it was the factory that gave me skills and university that made me an engineer but my branch of engineering (automotive) is today dominated by mathmatical modelling as much as metal and materials science. Key to the continued success of our University education system will be the extent to which Mechatronics is taught and lab facilities are made available in the teeth of financial cut-backs and inappropriatly applied legislation.

Tony (Visiting professor of powertrain engineering, University of Bradford)

[nigel jones 5Participant @nigeljones5]

I took on an apprentice a while back, only 2 people even applied for the post, and the pay was way more than the lowest rate….he just walked off site one day and never came back!

[Peter HallParticipant @peterhall61789]

I hate to throw a spanner into the works, but would anyone care to define the word "Engineer"? It seems to be used to describe anyone from a spotty sixteen year-old to a Rocket Scientist.

Pete

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Peter,

Engineer comes from the same etymological root as ingenuity.

… Perhaps that would help focus a few minds.

MichaelG.

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