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With the automation skills shortage becoming a leading concern for both suppliers and end users alike, G Venkatesh takes a look at the extent of the problem and examines some of the steps companies are taking to recharge the talent pipeline.
It is going to be like this for the next few years. It is going to be good for drivers because there is a shortage of drivers. That is a quote from Gregory Biffle, a NASCAR race driverin the US.
Replace drivers with IT and automation professionals and you capture the current scenario in the industrial sector. These guys have been having it good during the last two decades and more, and now, they would have it better. Adversities for the industry translate to opportunities for talented professionals.
If electronics was a chosen field in the 1980s, and computer science in the 1990s, the blend of both, beckons in the first decade of the century. While automation service providers and industries with automated setups are gearing up by emphasizing on the need for training and retraining and also collaborating much more than ever before with universities around the world, consultants are also having a whale of a time, as far as business opportunities are concerned.
The automation sector or more correctly put, the automation component of industry, has an upstream linkage to several sectors – machine building, electronics, control and instrumentation devices, hydraulic and pneumatics, etc, and the lynchpin – the software which maintains perfect order in the miasma of clanging gears, reciprocating pistons and revolving motor spindles.
To put these things together into one working whole, one needs systems developers and automation experts, who work shoulder to shoulder to automate setups. Of course, high and medium-level skills are also required to monitor and mend when needed, during the use phase of the automation system. Skills shortages can thus exist in either the development phase or the use and maintenance phase, or both; and this varies from one geographical location to another.
In the UK, for instance, embedded systems developers and programmers have been in great demand, with the supply not matching up to both the quantitative and qualitative needs of the industry. Over in the US, respondents to a recent Control Engineering survey identified skills shortages as the number one challenge they expect to face over the next fi ve years, well ahead of other typical concerns like budget restrictions and competitive pressures.
Global phenomenon
And it is not just in the Western world. Skills shortage is the dominant challenge facing employers in China, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, according to a 2007 Q3 report out from Hudson, a provider of permanent recruitment, contract professionals and talent management services worldwide.
If there is a limited talent pool, employers compete among themselves to attract the best, and for this, they would dangle the proverbial carrot – perks, higher pay and fringe benefits. Having tried this, if the purpose has still not been served, it would pay to invest in augmenting the skill-sets of their existing workforce through in-factory training programmes, or sponsored crash courses whereby employees are mandated to spend a few weeks or months, acquiring skills at universities or training institutes from specialists, at the company’s expense. In fact, according to the same Hudson survey, provision of training programs trails a close second to higher salaries in employers’ hiring and retention strategies.
Over in India, it’s a case of a huge cake and not enough people to consume it. The expected inflow of FDI by way of business process outsourcing into the Indian IT sector, is analogous to the cake, and the fear that there may not be enough skilled professionals to justify and sustain the FDI inflow looms large. With the growth triggered by, and triggering in turn, this FDI inflow, set to be at over 30 percent (CAGR), the forecast is for a shortfall of half a million IT staff by 2010.
Down under, as Robert Mahony, Vice President of the Australian Robotics and Automation Association tells CE Asia, an academiauniversity nexus is working towards eliminating the dearth of skills.
However, Mahony, does express qualms about industries expecting universities to provide them with “finished products” (read skilled manpower fitting the bill 100 percent). Indian academics this writer has interacted with over the years are also of a very similar opinion.
They may have failed to look eye to eye, but then the fact that there is a mutual dependence. While universities may look at the relation as a demand for jobs and a supply of talent, the industries would construe it as a demand for talent and a supply of jobs. Even if an equilibrium is restored, it would be a dynamic one; none of the two entities can call the shots for too long a time.
Mahony believes that in partnership, universities and the industry can move towards new models of education to equip the graduates for the challenges of the future.
Reaching out
However, industries are also realizing the fact that they cannot wholly depend on the universities to supply them with perfectlyhoned and ready-to-use manpower, and are thus taking their own initiatives.
The ABB University, Asea Brown Boveri’s training arm, is testimony to the Swiss-headquartered company’s intention to not just attract but also develop, retrain and retain the best talent worldwide to fuel its success in the years to come. And as James Foo, the Country Manager of ABB Singapore tells CE Asia, in Singapore, the company collaborates with educational institutions like the National University of Singapore, the Nanyang Technological University, and the polytechnics to train their students in the area of process control, instrumentation and electrical engineering. Each year, some students complete their projects under the guidance of ABB specialists and also go on to build their careers with the company.
Many would also be familiar with US-headquartered Emerson Process Management’s online PlantWeb University, which has been active in training and guiding clients over the last six years. “Since its inception in 2002, PlantWeb University has provided practical, real-world information to over 20,000 industry users around the world. The courses are an objective and useful tool for learning how to improve process and business performance,” says Emerson.
Other American companies which have been enabling and benefiting from the automation revolution in the manufacturing/ process sectors, such as National Instruments (NI) and SolidWorks, have begun to foray into “educative” ventures by collaborating closely with schools and universities. Some 5,000 universities in 120 countries have reportedly integrated NI’s LabVIEW graphical programming software into their curricula.
National Instruments has in fact gone even further, targeting school children as well as the college crowd. A collaboration with Lego has produced Mindstorms NXT, a high-tech toy kit that enables children to build and program their very own robot. Servo motors, sensors, and a version of NI’s LabVIEW graphical programming software are all included in the kit.
Call it a kind of corporate social responsibility or hedging against mid-term skills shortages, the industry is attempting to keep its corners covered. What is a challenge to the industry has been a business opportunity for consulting firms like IDC Technologies. This US-based firm has been providing high quality automation training to update engineers, scientists and technicians the worldover through its workshops. And yes, a good number of them have been in Asia.
Retirement reactions
Technology is developing at a blinding pace, and providing some companies with an edge over their competitors. This is making it mandatory for the latter to follow suit lest they may be knocked out of the dog-eat-dog marketplace.
Teaching an old dog new tricks, as the proverb goes, may be difficult, but the need to retrain employees who have been working with and have got inured to specific methods and approaches has suddenly become an inescapable reality.
On the other hand, when employees with rare skill-sets retire, they leave behind a vacuum in some sectors of industry, especially when the company has not thought along the lines of recruiting understudies who could take over the mantle.
For example, in the oil & gas sector, a Cambridge Energy Research Associates (Cera) study, cited by the Financial Times, recently revealed that there are already not enough engineers to meet the demands of current projects and a shortfall of 10-15 per cent is likely by 2010. While some companies have established new training centres in Southeast Asia, Cera notes that trainees will not acquire the skills to manage, much less design, big projects for several years.
Furthermore, Cera predicts that more than 50 per cent of today’s engineers in oil & gas – average age, 51 – will retire by 2015, an attrition rate of six percent a year. Although this will be offset by a fi ve percent influx of new entrants by 2010, there will be a knowledge gap, according to Pritesh Patel, co-author of the report.
In Japan, which has more geriatrics per capita of population than any other country, companies had anticipated and responded much earlier than elsewhere in the world. The retirement age has been relaxed and old folk with a wealth of experience are also being lured back to work.
At the same time, it helps that in-house training and skills development have always been quite commonplace in Japanese industry, and there has always been a lot of importance to continuous improvement (kaizen). Even in this age of automation and downsizing, they continue to believe that out of money, machines, materials and men, the last one will always be the spine of any successful industrial expertise.
The Asahi Glass Company (AGC) is one example of the Japanese stress on lifelong learning. In a bid to halt a decline in production workplace capabilities that might lead to a decline in overall competitiveness, in 2006, AGC opened the Monozukuri Training Center.
“We first identified what technologies and skills, and what types of human assets were necessary. Based on the two pillars of ‘identifying technologies and skills’ and ‘developing human resources’ each business unit has been planning and implementing measures for evaluating technology and skills, training employees, utilizing human resources, and fostering a corporate culture conductive to quality manufacturing,” says the company.
The game of demand and supply will go on, as it has been, from time immemorial. Industries and universities and also governments of countries which are conscious of the key role technology is playing in the growth of their respective national economies, will keep stepping in to apply “course corrections”. And to reiterate, it is going to be like this for the next few years.
| An Academic Angle In partnership, universities and industry should look to move towards new models of education that equip graduates for the challenges of the future, says Dr Robert Mahony, who is with the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, Australian National University, and also Vice President of the Australian Robotics and Automation Association. Q: In Australia, does the industry face a skills shortage as far as professionals trained in IT, systems development and automation are concerned? A: There is an IT skills shortage – particularly for competent systems architects. Australia does not have a strong automation industry per se, and I do not see a skills shortage in the traditional automation area. However, the country has a booming mining sector wherein there are shortages in all categories of operations, including IT-related work. Q: What is the dependence of the industry in Australia on IT and automation professionals from outside the country? A: Australia has an active skilled migrant program. There is significant migration into skilled IT-related jobs and this is an important aspect of sustaining our economic growth. It is much less common that engineers or IT specialists come to Australia to work on temporary visas. Q: Is there much industry-academia collaboration? A: There are several ad-hoc arrangements in place, however, they tend to be based on university initiatives and not industry initiatives. Q: There is some feeling in the industry that their needs are very different from the curriculum followed by universities. As an academic, how would you respond to this? A: An ideal hire for a company is a new graduate with a good base in critical thinking, problem solving skills, analytic ability, as well as a strong grounding in the basics of their field of knowledge and a deeper knowledge in their area of specialty. In addition, a good hire should have strong skills in management, planning, teamwork, and the other soft skills that are so important to productivity in an industrial setting. The problem is that, apart from the very talented students, this program takes upwards of six years for a student to absorb and most university degrees are four or five years. Historically, university provided the analytical and technical skills and industry accepted a role in continuing education, particularly in workplace skills. More recently, I have felt that industry has grown greedy and wants to hire graduates who can move straight into a responsible position and be productive immediately: in short, industries would like to hire new graduates with a skill set that would have been associated with a graduate with an additional year or two of work experience 15 years ago. I believe that universities cannot provide the “finished product” that companies are looking for; industry must consider new recruits as investments for their future and provide them with strong continuing education to complete the education process. Universities, however, still have a responsibility to work closely with their stakeholders to provide the education that best meets the needs of industry within the constraints of the time and resources available. Industry has a responsibility to make its requirements reasonable and provide the finishing touches to a graduates education. In partnership, we can move towards new models of education that equip our graduates for the challenges of the future. |
| Developing the Humanware According to Emely Tan, Head of Corporate Communications, and James Foo, President & Country Manager, attracting, developing and retaining the right talent is one of the biggest challenges for ABB Singapore. Q: How real and extensive is the so-called talent shortage? A: Shortage of qualified and skilled automation engineers is a global problem; at the current time, demand does indeed surpass supply. The collective retirement of the baby boomer generation over the next few years will make the shortage increasingly conspicuous and the ripples will be felt in the industry in general. Another concern is the propensity of young people these days to make a beeline for more lucrative business management courses and careers. Our customers are bracing up to this inevitable challenge by upgrading the skills of the existing personnel, extending retirement age, global sourcing and improving their work environments. The pinch is being felt by many of ABB’s clients in Europe and Asia. This has warranted a “globalized approach” towards sourcing and recruiting talent, and if companies lose their skilled operators to more lucrative job offers (there is a competition among companies to get the best and higher salary offers are an inducement), they are now more open than before to fill the vacancies with replacements from foreign countries. Q: How are your customers coping with the challenge of recruiting enough employees with the right skill-sets to understand and operate automated process equipment? A: Demand for process automation is increasing in response to both a shortage of labor in the process industry (think of automation as a tool to reduce dependence on manual labor in the industry) all around the world. In-situ automation engineering programs are still not allencompassing, and engineers are often “imported”. ABB braced up to this challenge in anticipation by developing an extensive training program for engineers and technical personnel at the ABB University. The University offers on-site at ABB training facilities as well as customized programs to solve specific concerns of our clients. In Singapore, the opening of a more comprehensive ABB Customer Training Center which is less than a year old, aims to provide the best training facilities for the company’s customers. In addition to ABB’s University programs, it also houses the new Marine Academy, complementing ABB’s Global Center of Competence for Drilling Drives Systems. Thus, the focus is not just on recruiting to fill gaps, but also on investing in training and developing the “humanware” progressively. Also in Asia, ABB’s clients in the pulp and paper industry are outsourcing their high-end, full-service maintenance needs, and we are constantly building in-house competence for them. Q: What steps is ABB taking to ensure it has sufficient talent to fuel its own growth ambitions? A: ABB has ambitious expansion plans, which entail the recruitment of many engineers knowledgeable about process automation solutions worldwide. In May 2007, the ABB Group established a foundation to provide scholarships to talented engineering students with a total funding of 20 million Swiss francs (US$16.6 million). In addition to their scholarships, successful students will be invited to attend regional and international events, hosted by ABB, and will be allocated a local ABB mentor. They will also have the opportunity for paid internships with ABB during vacations and – depending on their performance and personal wishes – the possibility of ABB employment at the end of their studies. The partnering universities in 2008 are based in Brazil, China, Egypt, India and Poland. It should also be pointed out that all local ABB companies worldwide have some form of collaborative program with technical and engineering educational institutions such as internship, graduate programs, project awards, sponsorships, scholarships, etc. In Singapore, for instance, the company collaborates with educational institutions like NUS, NTU, the polytechnics and the ITEs to train students in the area of process control, instrumentation and electrical engineering. Every year, students are recruited from the polytechnics and universities for their industrial orientation training, and some complete their projects under the guidance of ABB specialists. At ABB, we want to recruit the best people in the industry; and attracting, developing and retaining the right talent to fuel our success is one of our biggest challenges. |
| Pumping the Pipeline Keiran Coulton, President, Rockwell Automation, Asia Pacifi c region, tells CE Asia what steps the company is taking to ensure a strong pipeline of talent for the industry. Q: How would you assess the impact of the talent shortage in your company and in your client base? A: There is generally a shortage of highly-skilled people and a high demand for them. At Rockwell Automation, we see this “war for talent” as a sustainability issue that is directly linked to our ability to drive our growth and performance strategy. Our company continues to identify ways to attract, develop and retain the best talent in the industry. The changing global demographics suggest that we need to build on our ability to manage and connect across cultures. Rockwell has built a good network of people and talent is available in most areas of the world. Hence in areas where the customer does not have the right skills available, we can often provide it directly. We also perceive a paucity of talent to maintain old legacy systems as many of the people involved have retired. Because Rockwell is dedicated to the automation industry, it can provide resource to both manage our own legacy products and those from third parties. Q: To what extent have the training programs at Rockwell Automation been successful in alleviating concerns regarding skills shortages? A: Rockwell is taking steps to enhance the methods of developing leaders, recruiting talented people, providing career development, and ensuring that we maintain the inclusive culture we function in. Our comprehensive training programs are both internally and externally focused. This allows our customers to have confidence in our ability to support and train them to be selfreliant. Rockwell also spends a considerable amount of money to ensure that we reach out to the up-and-coming engineer, be that in a technical college or a university campus. In China, we are the absolute trendsetter of university relations and we have strong relationships with some of the best universities in every region of the world. Q: There seems to be a much greater collaboration now in the US, with National Instruments working closely with school kids and the CAD Academy bringing people from different fields together to design syllabi for instance. A knee-jerk reaction to impending fears of scarcity? A: I think collaboration is happening at all levels of academia as well as previously unconnected islands of technology. Simplifying the integration of different parts of the manufacturing lifecycle and encouraging more intelligent methods, designs and programming will help to ease the skill shortage being seen in the automation and technology businesses. Our early education partnerships are designed to build a future pipeline of students who will eventually be candidates for scholarships, internships and advanced technology careers. By doing so, we are improving our communities and educating tomorrow’s workforce and customer base. Q: Is there a certain amount of the inertia that makes people reluctant to learn new things on the job? A: The only inertia that prevents on-the-job learning or adoption of new technologies is the pressure to get the project done. However, we see these pressures being eased as Rockwell Automation continues to contribute to global standards and design tools that make reusable engineering a reality. Keiran Coulton, President, Rockwell Automation, Asia Pacific region |
