No matter where a conversation about additive manufacturing challenges may begin, it typically always leads to a discussion about skills.
If the findings from the first two TCT UK User Group meetings are any sort of indicator, the lack of education and training is at the root of much of the 3D printing industry's biggest hang ups, whether that's understanding how to successfully design a part for additive, up-skilling traditional workforces to exploit the technology's benefits, or making informed choices about sustainable manufacturing.
The UK Government's announcement this week to "create a shared national ambition to boost the nation’s skills" through Skills England has outlined ambitions to deliver highly skilled workforces that enable British businesses to recruit more home-grown talent, listing construction, IT, healthcare and engineering amongst the industries it's aiming to target. With a plan to establish Skills England over the next 12 months and "create a responsive and collaborative skills system," the government has said it will start with "an assessment of future skills needs." Could (or perhaps should) AM have a place amongst those future skills?
After the fully-costed 2017 UK Additive Manufacturing Strategy went largely ignored, with AM securing just one mention in the Government's Industrial Strategy launched that same year, is now the time for AM to make itself known and get on the agenda? And if it did, what could that potentially look like?
TCT asked some of the UK's prominent AM figures for their thoughts.
Steve Cox, 3D Technologies Consultant at AMFORi Consulting, welcomed the news: "The acknowledgment that the apprenticeship levy model isn’t working is somewhat overdue. Whilst apprenticeships specifically in AM aren’t yet a well-established pathway to solving the skills issue the additional freedom that Skills England will have to re-direct levy money to a wider range of value-added programmes could be something very beneficial to our sector of manufacturing."
As ab Education Ambassador for The CREATE Education Project, Cox also acknowledged some of the programmes that are already doing a lot of work in the UK to push AM technologies, and could benefit from further resources: "Programmes such as Inspiring Lancashire run by BAE Systems in conjunction with the CREATE Education Project have demonstrated their value in promoting STEAM and digital skills alongside those associated with 3D printing and are the sort of thing that needs support to scale across the country."
Professor Kate Black, CEO & Founder at Atomik AM, a spin-out from the University of Liverpool which is aiming to reshape advanced manufacturing with a responsible mindset, believes addressing the required skills for the future will demand a complete shift in approach.
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"To meet the skills required for not just the AM community but the manufacturing community as a whole, industry and academia must start to think differently, work collaboratively, and throw away the old rule book," Black said. "The announcement of the Government’s Skills England approach to uniting key partners to address the skills required for the next decade, across all regions is a crucial step forward."
Mark Chester, Product Development Specialist at the Centre for Digital Innovation, PrintCity at Manchester Metropolitan University is encouraged by the announcement. PrintCity operates at the intersection between industry and education and works directly with businesses to help them leverage digital technologies, while creating a pipeline of talent equipped the necessary skills to fulfil those digital manufacturing roles.
"It’s wonderful to see a strategy around skills coming out so soon from the new Government," Chester said. "The joined up approach between central and local government, and key stakeholders is to be welcomed. I’m encouraged to see a pragmatic longer term approach being taken in decades rather than in election cycles. In recent weeks I have attended trade shows and conferences in the UK and the US as well as visiting some cutting-edge companies, additive manufacturing is seeing more and more adoption and these companies are looking for the kind of graduates that we have coming from our MSc course on Digital Design and Manufacturing at PrintCity at The Manchester Metropolitan University. A joined up skills strategy will benefit employers and employees and will drive economic growth."
Claire Scott, Technology Adoption Specialist at Made Smarter, which works closely with PrintCity to facilitate the link between businesses and digital skills, said equipping manufacturers with digital manufacturing skills, will be integral to the UK's growth.
"Technology is a tool and without the skills to utilise these tools manufacturing companies will struggle to adopt and fully see the advantages that they can bring to their business," Scott said. "In the past we have supported businesses through our long standing partnership with Print City at Manchester Metropolitan University to develop a Fast Track Additive Manufacturing course which provided Small & Medium Enterprise (SME) manufacturers with these much-needed skills. Equipping SME manufacturers with the skills needed to effectively use additive manufacturing, along with other industrial digital technologies, are a key part of the plan to ensure that UK manufacturing continue to grow and thrive."
Paul Holt, owner Managing Director at Photocentric, a Peterborough-based 3D printing company, believes "additive manufacturing must be at the heart of Industry 4.0". The company's own LCD technology is based on an invention funded by Innovate UK more than a decade ago, which Holt says has the potential to "free the UK from supply chain risk" and "reduce carbon by over 50%" when paired with recent developments in automation. Though, Holt argues, in order to fully leverage AM's promise, the UK needs to "train students with design for additive manufacturing skills now." The company's New Business Director, Sally Tipping agrees it all starts with design and materials, but it's also about understanding how the technology can be used to support local manufacturing, speed to market, de-risking of new product launches and improve product performance. That education applies across the whole value chain.
Daniel Johns, CEO at 3T Additive Manufacturing, a UK-based provider of production metal additive manufacturing solutions, believes a lot of the skills needed for AM are already being taught at UK universities. Instead, Johns suggest initiatives like this should be focused on addressing where the challenges are across programmes that feed directly into industry, like apprenticeships.
"The skills gap for industrial AM isn’t in Higher Education, since we already teach the relevant skills like manufacturing engineering, process control and mechanical design. The gap is in Further Education and the apprenticeships that feed industry with skilled technicians and operators. However, in order to train apprentices on equipment, the colleges need to afford the industrial AM equipment, but they can’t. We also don’t have a critical mass of AM industry jobs to argue that we need dedicated AM apprenticeships, so until we do, industry will continue to provide on-the-job training."
