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Manufacturing and Education
Reflections on a Symposium
ROBERT A. FROSCH
.
Following are this cochairman's observations and reflections on the
Symposium on Education for the Manufacturing World of the Future
convened by the National Academy of Engineering. While not a
summary of the proceedings in a strict sense, these remarks attempt
to capture the tone of the meeting that emerged in both formal and
informal discussions among the participants, and highlight some of the
major points expressed, suggested, and recommended by individual
participants and working groups.
From the outset, symposium participants appeared to be clearly
frustrated about the state of manufacturing engineering and the status
of manufacturing engineers. Apparently a major source of this frustra-
tion is a distinct (and probably correct) perception that the importance
of manufacturing in the process of innovation and in the establishment
of business competitiveness has been almost completely ignored for a
long time. With the focus of business attention on fiscal and management
areas, the art and science of manufacturing engineering have been
allowed to decay, and companies have not recognized manufacturing
engineering skills as high-priority ones to be highly rewarded. Rather,
manufacturing has increasingly become a place to demonstrate only
"managerial" skills, with more rewards given for these than for
technical competence, skill, and ingenuity in the technical tasks of
Robert A. Frosch served as cochairman of this symposium with Erich Bloch, who
served until September 1984.
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FROSCH
manufacturing. In fact, manufacturing jobs have increasingly become
routes to other parts of the business and to expanding responsibility
in nonmanufacturing areas.
In spite of the considerable talk about the importance of manufac-
turing engineering, participants felt that relatively little change has
occurred during the past several years in the status of manufacturing
engineers in corporations, and that the status of manufacturing engi-
neering is only beginning to change within the academic community.
Indeed, another theme clearly expressed at the symposium was a good
deal of uncertainty about what direction this change should take.
There was also considerable uncertainty about what a manufacturing
engineer is in terms of education and training, as well as the nature of
manufacturing and engineering and the skills and ideas involved. This
is quite understandable given the variety of activities undertaken in
manufacturing and the variety of products involved. It is not imme-
diately obvious that a homogeneous discipline even exists, making it
extraordinarily difficult to describe a definite curriculum that should
be pursued.
All of this is intensified by the fact that manufacturing has not been
highly regarded as a career path for students because of its curious
position in industry. The best students in engineering rarely choose to
take manufacturing-related courses, even when they are available.
Instead, they choose the much more popularly regarded courses such
as computers and communication. In the areas of engineering most
closely connected to manufacturing-the structural and dynamics
aspects of mechanical engineering, for example-there has been a
tendency toward theoretical curricula little related to manufacturing
processes. In the view of the participants, all this appears to have
been exaggerated by the relatively little contact between the academic
world and the world of manufacturing. There has been much talk about
closer contacts between these two worlds, but the process seems to
be only beginning.
DILEMMAS AND CONNECTIONS
In the discussions of several working groups, as well as in the
speeches and pane} discussion, conflicts arose regarding the idea of
theory and the matter of the reality of the manufacturing floor. It was
stated that experience, not theory, is the key to solving problems, and
yet a grounding in fundamentals is extremely important.
To complicate the matter further, the view was expressed that part
of the problem stems from the lack of a good body of theory about
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REFLECTIONS ONA SYMPOSIUM
3
manufacturing and manufacturing engineering, making it difficult to
construct a curriculum and educational program. This is the case, and
it results partly from the problem of how to define a manufacturing
engineer, as well as how to answer the question: What body of theory
can be constructed for what is not yet defined as a coherent body of
experience and operation?
One theme touched upon several times in the discussion-the
dichotomy or balance between the engineering and nonengineering
problems of manufacturing-may help illuminate the question of theory.
Engineering problems describe engineering in the strictest sense: the
physical nature of machines, the processes by which machines create
a product, the engineering systems that provide the physical designs
for machines and processes and control the machines, and the means
by which materials are moved and controlled.
Nonengineering problems concern the need to put the engineering
side of manufacturing in an overall business context, so that engineering
choices make economic sense and relate properly to social questions
of health, environment, and the position and relationships of labor,
management, and machines. Both speakers and discussants pointed
out that a purely technical education in the traditional engineering
sense is insufficient for a manufacturing engineer, since so much of
his or her effort deals with the business and social systems making
the manufacturing system work.
Thus while it was generally agreed that the manufacturing engineer
needs a background in social and economic systems and that the
engineering manager the business manager-needs a background in
production skills, it was also generally agreed that both parties are
likely to suffer from an attempt to cover both curriculum areas. In a
related viewpoint, several participants pointed out the inadequacy of
the economic and accounting tools necessary for manufacturing and
suggested that a new system be developed.
Thus a view emerged in both the presentations and discussion that
a much closer connection is needed between the technical engineering
side and the business management side of education for manufacturing.
However, dissatisfaction was also expressed with the existing base of
knowledge, and hence curriculum, for both sides. The latter view leads
to a clear implication for research on the systems aspects of manufac-
turing, as well as on the individual engineering techniques that go into
processes. On the business side, research is needed on new business
systems for understanding and controlling the economics and manage-
ment aspects of manufacturing systems.
All these viewpoints suggest the importance of establishing connec-
tions between business and engineering schools within universities so
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4
FROSCH
that each can bolster the curriculum of the other in preparing engineers
and managers for manufacturing. These connections should clearly
extend beyond concerns with curricula to the research necessary to
establish a better set of foundations for future manufacturing engi-
neering and management. Both the engineers and business managers
emerging from such coupled curricula would be better prepared not
only for their roles in manufacturing, but also for moving, in a career
sense, beyond manufacturing to management roles in the total manu-
facturing business.
In stressing another connection, representatives of both academia
and industry agreed that the mechanisms used by students and faculty
to obtain knowledge of the manufacturing reality and to construct and
teach a theory based on that reality, respectively, were inadequate.
They also recognized the inadequate understanding that industry people
have of the educational process and of the opportunities to influence
that process.
Both parties are eagerly seeking answers to these inadequacies, but
the clear mismatches between the practices and arrangements in the
two sectors make this no easy task. For example, the time pressures
and economic realities facing industry do not allow engineers to spend
much time in academia, and their experience does not substitute for
the criteria that would make them acceptable in academic circles.
Conversely, the theoretical backgrounds of academics are not consid-
ered sufficient for them to play continual direct roles in the industrial
context, and they too have time difficulties in arranging this. Clearly,
considerably more discussion and a greater number of experiments in
industry-academia cooperation are needed to find better ways to resolve
these difficulties.
Thus the construction of new understanding and of a new curriculum
for manufacturing engineering education must be seen in the context
of a three-body institutional problem; the engineering and business
schools of academia and industrial manufacturing. Indeed, the con-
nections between industry and the university community must include
both the engineering and business schools, and these connections may
play a role in which these two academic forces work together effectively
to produce new systems understanding and methods for manufacturing.
VALUE OF THE MEETING
This symposium was a meeting ground for the three communities
just described. While principally a meeting of engineers interested in
manufacturing engineering, the symposium also included participants
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REFLECTIONS ON A SYMPOSIUM
s
who understood the business school aspect of the problem from both
the industrial and the academic sides. In particular, it gave represen-
tatives of the manufacturing sector an opportunity to meet together.
This new opportunity for many of the participants to discuss what
turned out to be common subjects was the key value of the symposium.
New and continuing opportunities for such interaction will be important
to improve the currently inadequate arrangements for contacts between
industry and academia related to this subject and to upgrade common
contributions toward research and toward common understanding of
suitable curricula.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Participants in this symposium thus concluded that some specific
problems must be attacked, although they did not define these problems
in great detail. Problems center on attempts to provide a theoretical
substructure for the system aspects of manufacturing engineering and
the need to establish new bases and new systems for the business
aspects of manufacturing engineering.
These findings should not be interpreted as the feeling that there is
no useful existing material. Rather, it is not clear how to bring what
exists into a modern context and provide a suitable foundation for new
manufacturing technologies, particularly the computer and robotic
revolution which seems about to overtake manufacturing. Any new
approaches must, however, involve industry, engineering schools, and
business schools, either on individual bases or in whole university and
industry contexts.
These general conclusions suggest a number of potential activities.
First, discussion and contacts are needed between industry and
individual companies and the universities in their areas, or with whom
they work, to reach agreement on a suitable forum for examination of
these issues. Second, academics and those in industry should keep
each other in mind and, by issuing invitations to appropriate events,
continue and enrich their contacts. Third, additional symposia could
be useful if they include participants from the necessary sectors and
are carefully designed to attack these problems.
Meetings specifically aimed at discussing possible research agendas
might be useful if they are meant to produce a set of ideas that
individual schools and industries might use as material to think about
and work on, not an agreed-upon agenda for group action. Such
meetings could be held together or separate from meetings to discuss
curricular possibilities, and they should include not only academics
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FROSCH
but also a leavening of industry people. Furthermore, these meetings
should go beyond narrowly defined gatherings on technical engineering
or on business management to mix people from opposite fields.
While little was said at this symposium about the roles of professional
societies in this process, they could well ponder the results of the
proposed cooperation between industry and academia in considering
their programs in fields related to manufacturing.
Clearly, this symposium produced results which, while not precise,
suggest further activities and directions of work, and indeed, suggest
actions that the National Academy of Engineering might take in
planning its future program.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
manufacturing engineer
