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OCR for page 62
Maintaining the Lifelong
Effectiveness
of Engineers in Manufacturing
ROBERT M. ANDERSON, JR.
For a long time, U.S. manufacturing enterprises had no major
problems. Americans led the world in manufacturing experience for
almost a century, and American manufactured goods dominated world
markets. Today, however, manufacturers from other countries have
adopted and improved new technologies (many of which originated in
America) to become the high-quality, low-cost suppliers to world
markets. American manufacturing organizations must therefore undergo
a revolutionary change to incorporate a host of new technologies to
regain or maintain their international competitiveness.
This paper begins by discussing the background and factors that
relate to the problem of maintaining the lifelong effectiveness of
engineers in manufacturing. It then presents a process for identifying
what engineers need to do to keep up to date. This presentation is
followed by a description of the drivers and the barriers to individual
or organizational action as well as the mechanisms available to help
an engineer maintain his or her effectiveness. Finally, the paper
concludes with a call for leadership from those in industry, academia,
and government.
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?
Today's growing rate at which new technologies are being introduced
into manufacturing has created a large demand for engineers competent
Robert M. Anderson, Jr., is manager, Technical Education Operation, Corporate
Engineering and Manufacturing, General Electric Company, Bridgeport, Connecticut.
62
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LIFELONG EFFECTIVENESS OF ENGINEERS
63
in the new technologies. The universities, however, cannot produce
new graduates in sufficient numbers or with adequate knowledge and
skill to meet industry's need. American industry now faces the problem
of breaking with tradition to maintain the lifelong effectiveness of
engineers in manufacturing.
The Traditional Approach
Traditionally, maintaining the lifelong effectiveness of engineers has
not been an important problem for anyone. A typical engineering
career pattern entailed entering the profession at age 25, achieving
peak technical competence at age 35, moving into a managerial or
administrative position by age 40, and then somehow hanging on until
retirement. New technology was developed in research laboratories,
was taught in the universities, and was introduced into engineering
practice by the newly graduated and newly hired. The whole system
was reasonably stable; societal, industrial, professional, and individual
needs were all being adequately met.
Although individual engineers following the typical career path may
have bemoaned the compression of the salary distribution as a function
of age or experience, they still got their salary increases year by year
and they were still paid somewhat more than those with less experience.
They grew comfortable and were reasonably confident of maintaining
some position in their employing organization until retirement. Yes,
they talked some about the need to keep up to date, but the pressures
of the current work assignments together with the demands of family,
community, and hobbies combined to keep most engineers from
maintaining any serious program of continued study.
Managers of engineers saw no need to commit significant resources
to maintain the latter's technical competence. The rate of introduction
of new technology was such that new engineers with the necessary
expertise could be hired, and sufficient managerial and administrative
work existed (or could be created) to occupy the older engineers who
lacked expertise in the new technology. Besides, managerial promo-
tions resulted from solving real problems and from producing new
products, new buildings, higher sales, lower costs, or higher quarterly
earnings, not from maintaining competence of the emergency staff. If
the technical competence of engineers in the group ever became
inadequate to meet business objectives, the manager could always lay
off those most out of date and hire a new batch of engineers with the
required technical knowledge and skills.
Those in academic institutions also saw no need to be concerned
about continuing education. They were fully occupied with the task
OCR for page 64
64
ANDERSON
of preparing young persons for entry into the profession. Participation
in continuing education activities was usually at the bottom of the list
of things that "good" professors were expected to do. This list typically
had research at the top along with publishing and obtaining grants,
followed by teaching undergraduates and counseling, and ended with
participation in continuing engineering education.
Government too tended to ignore the problem of maintaining the
technical competence of the engineering work force. Except for the
flurry of activity to place aerospace engineers as the space program
wound down, government did little for the mid-career professional.
Government scholarships, fellowships, loans, and loan guarantees
were all aimed primarily at young persons preparing for entry into the
profession.
In summary, maintaining the lifelong effectiveness of engineers in
general, and in manufacturing in particular, has not been a high priority
problem and no one has given it serious attention.
The Revolution of Today
A revolution in manufacturing is under way today. In a world much
different than that 10 or 20 years ago, new technologies and new
philosophical approaches including parts per million quality stand-
ards, zero inventory, flexibility, automation, information systems, and
communication systems-are being introduced at a significantly higher
rate than in the past as American industry strives to be economically
competitive in the world marketplace.
The traditional career path of the nondegreed manufacturing engineer
who began as a production worker or craftsman and was promoted as
a result of inherent skills does not and cannot provide the knowledge
and skills required today. Moreover, current manufacturing engineers
who have taken this path lack the fundamental knowledge and skills
necessary to conceive and to implement modern manufacturing tech-
nologies.
Even degreed manufacturing engineers are ill-equipped to create and
to install the new revolutionary technologies, which are not incremental
extensions of older manufacturing technologies. Formal education in
the physics of metal processing, for example, does not prepare a
person to generate the computer software to control the metal proc-
essing equipment.
Thus, on the one hand, industry is being forced to introduce new
and more complex technologies into manufacturing, while, on the
OCR for page 65
LIFELONG EFFECTIVENESS OF ENGINEERS
65
other hand, most of the existing manufacturing engineering work force
lacks competence in the new technologies.
Can universities meet the needs in manufacturing engineering? The
rate of introducing new- technology into all segments of society is so
great that the demand for engineers of all types is at an all-time high.
Enrollments in engineering schools are also at new highs, and more
new graduate engineers are entering the profession than ever before.
Nevertheless, the demand from other sectors is so great that the
number of engineers entering manufacturing is less than required.
Moreover, most engineering schools lack expertise in manufacturing.
Their faculties are not competent in the modern manufacturing tech-
nologies, and they do not have courses or degree programs in the new
technologies. Most universities are unable therefore to produce new
graduates with knowledge of or skills in modern manufacturing tech-
nologies.
Based on this situation, ways must be found to achieve and to
maintain the lifelong effectiveness of engineers in manufacturing. The
old ways of hiring enough new graduates or promoting people from
the shop floor cannot meet the need. Creative ideas, hard work, and
commitment not lip service-are required.
LIFELONG EFFECTIVENESS OF ENGINEERS
What Does "Effectiveness" Mean?
Is an engineer effective if he or she can write the software to
download a numerical control program from a minicomputer to a
programmable control on a machine? Is effectiveness knowing how to
plan a flexible manufacturing cell, get managerial approval to proceed,
and bring that cell into operation? What if an engineer has consummate
technical skills, but is unable to communicate with persons up and
down the management chain, to maintain a schedule, or to control
costs on projects?
The concept of "effectiveness" involves knowing and being able to
do many different things. Furthermore, the things that determine
whether someone is effective will change as they advance in their
career and as the technical requirements of their work change.
Employee and employer share the responsibility for achieving and
maintaining effectiveness in engineering. This is not a one-time task;
it is a continuing process that merges professional development and
technical education to keep up to date with new theories, processes,
products, and industries.
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ANDERSON
How to Determine Effectiveness
Since the concept of maintaining effectiveness is complex, a straight-
forward process is proposed here for identifying and assessing the
effectiveness of engineers in a manufacturing organization. The steps
in this process are:
1. Draw an organizational diagram that shows every position in the
organization held by a manufacturing engineer.
2. For each such position, list all the functions that the engineer
must perform. For each function, describe its significance to the whole
organization.
3. For each function, list the present requirements, that is, the body
of knowledge and set of skills that the incumbent must have to perform
that function.
4. For each engineer in the organization, list that person's present
state, that is, the body of knowledge and the set of skills that he or
she possesses.
5. Match each individual's present state against the present require-
ments of the position that he or she holds. Any present requirements
which the engineer does not possess form the present gaps.
An incumbent who has no present gaps is completely effective in
his or her present position. If some gaps exist, the individual's
performance is less than completely effective. If the list of gaps is long
and includes many significant items, the incumbent is ineffective.
Because the objective is lifelong effectiveness, one must also look
into the future. This projection is crucial for manufacturing since the
requisite skills for a manufacturing engineer are changing fundamentally
and rapidly. It requires envisioning what the company will be like at
some point in the future-for example, in three or five years and
what the engineering tasks in that situation will be. The process of
determining effectiveness is then repeated as follows:
1. Draw an organizational diagram that shows every position in the
future organization to be held by a manufacturing engineer.
2. For each such position, list the functions that the engineer in that
position will have to perform. Again, for each function describe its
significance to the organization.
3. For each function, list the future requirements, that is, the body
of knowledge and set of skills required to perform that function.
4. Compare the requirements of the future position against the
present state of the existing engineering work force. Try to identify
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LIFELONG EFFECTIVENESS OF ENGINEERS
67
an individual within the work force who can now or with a reasonable
amount of training and experience fill that position.
5. For each engineer who has been assigned to a future position,
list that person's future gaps, that is, future requirements not met by
the present state. (It might be useful to try a few different assignments
to minimize the aggregated future gaps.)
Formulating the Development Objective
At this point, there are two lists for every engineer in the enterprise:
one list of present gaps and one list of future gaps. For this process
to maintain its own effectiveness, written lists must be compiled so
that they can be discussed, debated, and refined. Careful judgment,
both managerial and individual, must be exercised at this point to
determine which gaps are significant, which will be addressed, and
when. This process establishes for the individual engineer a develop-
ment objective: specific knowledge or skill to be acquired and by what
date.
Based on the above process, "lifelong effectiveness" for engineers
can be defined as the process by which an engineer establishes a
development objective and works to minimize significant professional
gaps in both present and foreseeable future functions.
DRIVERS AND BARRIERS TO MAINTAINING EFFECTIVENESS
Once the development objective for an engineer is established, the
engineer and his or her manager are about halfway toward achieving
the goal of lifelong effectiveness. Considerable effort is still required,
however, on the part of both the individual engineer and the organi-
zation. At this point, an objective has been defined, but to achieve it
people have to do some things.
Why do people do, or not do, things? In "skunk" works projects,
for example, a group wants to do something so matcher perhaps has
such a strong sense of duty to do something that in spite of a multitude
of barriers, they accomplish the task. Alternatively, individuals or
organizations sometimes fail to take action. Even though they have
the ability and permission to take action, and even though it is clearly
in their best interests, for reasons which may be difficult to articulate,
they lack the will, desire, or commitment to achieve the goal. Why do
people behave this way?
From an individual perspective, why does a person do a particular
thing? He may do something because he wants to, because he should,
OCR for page 68
68
CAN
(ability)
-
-
FIGURE 1 Dr~vers for action.
MAY
(permission
-
-
ANDERSON
-
SHOU LD
(duty)
WANT
(desire)
-
\
/
-
merely because he is able to, or finally, because he is permitted to.
He wants to, he should, he can, he may: these four drivers for action
can be represented as quadrants of a circle as shown in Figure 1.
Drivers for action should be examined from an organizational
perspective as well. Motivating a manufacturing organization to main-
tain the effectiveness of engineers in the work force may require as
much thought and preparation as specifying the individual development
objective. The organization needs to understand the value and signif-
icance of this effort to its overall health, prosperity, survival, and
market success. No amount of effort by lower-level staff can produce
the benefits possible if upper management discourages this activity.
Why is it that a person will not do something? He doesn't want to,
he should not, he cannot, he may not: these four barriers to action
can also be represented as quadrants of a circle as shown in Figure 2.
Again, barriers to action must be examined from an organizational
perspective. A firm may say it wants up-to-date manufacturing engi-
neers, but it may send a different signal to the engineers. Meeting
production schedules may be given higher priority than training, or
worse yet, people who pursue training opportunities may be penalized
by the organization.
The representations of a circle of drivers and a circle of barriers can
be extremely useful. Overlaying the two circles is a convenient device,
albeit crude and inexact, for increasing awareness of four factors to
consider when one wants someone else to do a particular thing:
1. How much does he want to do it and why might he not want to
do it?
OCR for page 69
LIFELONG EFFECTIVENESS OF ENGINEERS
-
SH OU LD
NOT
-
DO NOT
WANT
-
CAN NOT
-
-
_
FIGURE 2 Bamers to action.
69
MAY
NOT
-
-
2. What is his sense of duty? Can we structure an obligation or is
some other sense of duty acting as a barrier?
3. What is his ability and opportunity? Does he have the right
position, access to the right information, or opportunity for the right
training?
4. Does he have permission? Is some prohibition barring the action?
By weighing the net impact of these drivers and barriers, one can
estimate probability of action. If one wants the action to be taken and
if the probability for this appears low, then one must try to increase
the appropriate drivers, decrease the inhibiting barriers, or both.
MECHANISMS FOR LIFELONG EFFECTIVENESS
After working to specify a development objective for an individual
engineer and assessing the drivers and barriers to action, the individual
engineer and his or her manager are still faced with choosing a specific
set of actions to achieve the development objective. The actions or
mechanisms by which people develop work-relevant knowledge and
skills include job experience and education and training. Development
is most effective when job tasks are structured to include growth
opportunities and when appropriate education or training is used to
enable or to support on-thejob growth tasks.
On-thejob task assignments are the most effective mechanisms for
individual development. Tasks should be relevant to the business of
the organization and significant from both a business and an individual
development point of view. Learning from peers, subordinates, and
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ANDERSON
superiors can take place naturally and easily in the context of job
performance.
Formal education and training are available in a wide variety of
programs from a wide variety of suppliers. Short courses and seminars
offered in-plant or at central locations by employers, professional
societies, universities, and entrepreneurs are available on almost any
topic. Degree programs and credit courses are available at local schools
and are frequently brought onto the work site with live instruction or
television.
Perhaps the most exciting new development in the delivery of
education and training to employed engineers is the founding of the
National Technological University (NTU). Formed in 1984, NTU will
begin in the fall of 1985 to deliver master' e-level engineering courses
from a consortium of universities to engineers at their work sites by
means of a television satellite distribution network (NTU originally
delivered courses by videotape). General Electric, IBM, and Hewlett-
Packard are but three of the companies that have pledged their support
to help NTU get started and to provide the NTU courses to their
employees.
The key to successful development is for the manager and engineer
to agree on using those mechanisms most appropriate to the engineer's
experience, ongoing work, and personal life. Both the engineer and
the manager must treat this effort as a continuing responsibility and
activity, not a one-time or a short-term effort. Development must
become an integral part of doing business. The time and money needed
must be made available consistently and reliably over several years.
CALL FOR LEADERSHIP
Engineering managers at every level of an organization must cham-
pion the cause of maintaining the lifelong effectiveness of their
engineers. Jim Cudmore, vice-president of engineering for Digital
Equipment Corporation (DEC), said in a speech at Northeastern
University (September 10, 1984) that among DEC divisions he can see
correlations of both business successes with strong programs of
technical professional development and business failures with weak or
nonexistent programs of technical professional development. The
companies with excellent technical professional development pro-
grams, such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard, enjoy extraordinary business
success in highly competitive and rapidly changing technologies.
The bottom-line payoff exists. If a business enterprise determines
its investment action using traditional financial measurements such as
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LIFELONG EFFECTIVENESS OF ENGINEERS
71
cost reductions and return on investment, then the case for investing
in strong programs of technical human resource development has to
be made in those measurement terms. Creativity is essential. One can
calculate, for example, the financial impact on the business if a whole
segment of the market is lost due to the failure of manufacturing
personnel to stay current technologically. One can demonstrate that
training and educating the present experienced engineers are less
expensive actions than replacing the existing work force with new
engineers. (Costing Human Resources by W. F. Cascio [Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1982] may be helpful in making these kinds of calculations.)
Active leadership is also needed within the academic community to
support and defend those professors devoting significant time and
energy to continuing engineering education. Because change in higher
education institutions appears to have a certain glacial quality, as many
of the existing academic programs must be utilized as possible.
Technology must be applied to making course material as widely and
as promptly available as possible, particularly in manufacturing where
so few can teach and so many need to learn. A good example of this
is the National Technological University's approach of televising on-
campus graduate engineering classes for engineers at their work
locations by means of satellite transmission.
Finally, leadership is needed from those
in government. Public
policies that inhibit the education and training of practicing engineers
must be changed. These policies lay the groundwork for the mass
obsolescence of American engineers and the loss of U.S. leadership
worldwide in manufactured goods. Instead, more positive government
incentives are needed to promote the continuing professional devel-
opment of engineers in industry. Officials at all levels of government
national, state, and local must provide the leadership to support
education for professionals as an investment vital to ensuring the
future of a free and economically successful American society.
Retraining the existing engineering work force to handle the new
technologies and operating systems is the best way to make the most
change in the shortest time. This is a big task and must involve
manufacturers, educators, and the government. America's share of
world manufacturing will be reduced if actions are not taken to provide
American engineers the opportunity and the means to remain effective
technical professionals for their lifetime.
OCR for page 72
Representative terms from entire chapter:
development objective
