17th July 2023
As a member of the Manufacturing Assembly Network, PP Control & Automation is advocating for better engagement between industry and academia. Encouraging young people into engineering is not only critical as the skills gap grows, but it’s essential for future-proofing the UK as an innovative nation, capable of helping to solve some of the world’s biggest problems.
The Design & Make Challenge might form part of the answer. The event caught the attention of national media last week and might just be the perfect recipe for wider engagement from schools and young people. The group and individual members are hoping it is a blueprint that the rest of the UK manufacturing community borrows for themselves, spreading the mission further and wider.
As BBC and Sky News cameras focused their lenses on the leaders behind the Manufacturing Assembly Network’s Design & Make Challenge, a clear message was delivered to the population.
Take a minute to really think about the statement above from Austin Owens, Managing Director of Grove Design and Co-chair of the Manufacturing Assembly Network. Encouraging young people to pursue engineering in the UK directly relates to tackling serious societal challenges.
Those ‘new solutions’ Austin refers to are exciting and ambitious projects that will promote environmental sustainability, enhance infrastructure resilience, improve public health, and create a more inclusive society.
Design & Make Challenge is one of the biggest independent STEM events held in the UK. It challenges Year 10, 11 and 12 students to work in teams to build a prototype that they can test and then ultimately submit into the competition.
This year’s challenge, held at WMG asked students to design and make a flying vehicle or projectile, with prizes reserved for ‘efficiency’, ‘innovation’, ‘manufacturing’ and for ‘communications’ – the latter is all about proving there is a whole host of non-engineering jobs associated with the manufacturing industry.
HR People Partner, Malcolm Condon engages with a team of students attempting to build their first aerodynamic design.
Teams hope for sustained flight and distance as they test their designs on the rig
If Design & Make can empower young people and instil in them a new confidence, then this is something always worth pursuing. If young people come away thinking that they can be part of the solution to the world’s most complex problems, then that’s the type of excitement we need to generate on a broader scale.
Design & Make is also addressing a significant shortage of skilled engineers in various sectors and by encouraging young people into engineering careers, the group can help bridge this skills gap and ensure a sustainable supply of talent to meet the needs of industry and the broader population.
The world is rapidly evolving, and technological advancements are transforming industries. Young people pursuing engineering today will be equipped with the skills and knowledge necessary for the future job market. Engineering education cultivates critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, and adaptability skills that are valuable across various sectors.
L: Charlotte Horobin (Make UK) addresses the room with an inspiring speech on the importance of engineers as the problem solvers behind the world’s biggest challenges.
R: Richard Spears, Marketing Manager & Malcolm Condon take part in the judging.
Bringing the need for such skills to light during the challenge is also what ignites enthusiasm in the young participants on the day. A friendly competitive nature builds quite quickly but it’s the problem-solving approaches that are the most enjoyable to witness.
When we’re talking about how we generate energy, how we come up with sustainable mobility, improve wellbeing, protect the food supply chain… When we’re talking about how we help solve everyday issues, as well as huge global challenges, it’s problem solvers that we need.
The annual Design & Make Challenge gave young people the perfect opportunity to put their engineering skills to the test, with more than 80 students and 15 apprentices and graduate engineers in attendance.
The UK’s biggest independent STEM event crowned four major winners last week in a competition that attracted more than 80 pupils keen to get an insight into engineering.
Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School, Great Wyrley Academy, John Taylor High School, and Lawrence Sheriff High School took the prizes at the Design & Make Challenge 2023, the largest one ever held by the Manufacturing Assembly Network.
Great Wyrley Academy’s model surpassed the organisers’ expectations by travelling 16 metres to the wall at the end of the test area, earning them the ‘efficiency’ title.
John Taylor and Lawrence Sheriff won the ‘manufacturing’ and ‘innovation’ titles for ease of manufacture and the uniqueness of their designs respectively, with Bishop Vesey’s securing the ‘communications’ prize for the way they told the story of the day.
Photos (Top to bottom): Great Wyrley (Efficient Design Award), John Taylor (Design for Manufacture Award), Lawrence Sheriff (Innovative Design Award) & Bishop Vesey (Communications Award).
Ian Knight, Chief Information Officer at PP Control & Automation (PP C&A) challenges the prevailing, often vague narrative around AI adoption and reframes the conversation around a more practical starting point: operational constraints.
Artificial intelligence is no longer a distant concept for manufacturers. It is already being explored across quotation, production planning, engineering, quality, supply chain and customer service functions. Yet, for many organisations, the gap between experimentation and meaningful operational impact remains difficult to close.
A leading aquaculture specialist – that is changing the way fish are vaccinated safely – has signed a major manufacturing deal.
On paper, defined discipline-specific suppliers can look organised. However, every additional supplier introduces another handoff, and every handoff creates another point where time, quality, communication and accountability can be lost.
Very rarely does growth not surface because an OEM lacks ambition. Shortcomings arise because operating models built to support such ambition don’t evolve quickly enough.
Recent weeks have brought two important industry moments into sharp focus, concluding that demand for AI and automation is rising, but investment, skills, and long-term thinking must follow.
For decades, one question has sat at the heart of operational strategy for machine builders and OEMs: make or buy? It’s a familiar debate and it isn’t the wrong question by any means, but perhaps it is an incomplete one.
In most machine building businesses, change is still treated as an exception. A late-stage drawing revision, component substitution, or wiring tweak discovered during build. Each one is handled, resolved, and signed off. And then everyone moves on. But what if that’s the wrong way to think about it? What if change isn’t the disruption to the system but the system itself?
