Revitalizing us manufacturing to capitalize on innovation - through education

Abstract

We find that a conventional engineering degree approach to education is not sufficient to meet the new challenges in the ecosystem of manufacturing, design and business innovation, and product realization. Instead a new form of engineering education, the “Professional Masters” is required that takes the grounding provided by typical Bachelor of Science in engineering degree and provides condensed, formalized, experiencewith systems,applications, projects, and non-technical topics to create a true professional ready to maximize their value to the company and ready to use their experience to lead. The Master of Engineering in Manufacturing (MEngM) at MIT was developed over a period of 10 years, and has more than 200 alumni. It is based on the notion of a need for graduate level education in the profession of engineering that is not fulfilled by the conventional research- oriented Master of Science degree. We have learned that there is a large pool of outstanding students who will seek out this degree once it is offered, and who have as alumni drawn strongly positive reviews from their employers. Students in the program are drawn to the notion that manufacturing is how technological advances and innovations become rooted in a nation's economy. They want to understand the essential components and growth opportunities of the foundation - manufacturing and innovation - of an economy. There are many indicators of the decline of manufacturing in the US, most of them economic. One troubling indicator is the persistent lack of interest in careers in this field, particularly at the collegiate and post-graduate level. While there are continual calls for better labor force training and government programs to support the same, there are actually disincentives for promising young professionals to enter this field. Societal perception and industry needs seem to run counter to one another. We propose that the MEngM can serve as one example of a new national model for professional manufacturing engineering education. It can profoundly impact the US’s innovation ecosystem which is the foundation of our manufacturing based economy today and in the future.