Design engineering competencies: future requirements and predicted changes in the forthcoming decade
Section snippets
Selection of future time horizon
The company under study primarily manufactures aerospace products with an average timescale of four years from initial design to initial production. Furthermore, the company had a relatively full order book and was therefore relatively financially stable for the short-term future. It was therefore felt that a five-year horizon would be too short. Looking 20 years ahead was considered too speculative. Consequently, a 10-year future time horizon was selected as most appropriate.
Overview of three-phase methodology
The current
Phase 1 – Preliminary interviews
The company in which this research was conducted has a six-stage design process. Phase 1 interviewees had recommended focusing on three particular stages when exploring the future competencies, namely: Stage 1: Preliminary Concept Definition; Stage 3: Product Realisation; and Stage 5: Service Support. It was felt that these three stages offered sufficient contrast to be of research interest. The interview data also identified likely changes in each of these stages over the next 10 years.
Several
Discussion
The six competency groups to emerge from the final analysis contain a mixture of both technical and non-technical competencies, as suggested by previous research examining the future requirements of technical roles (Plonka et al., 1994, Rifkin et al., 1999). Unfortunately, neither Plonka et al. (1994) nor Rifkin et al. (1999) assessed the importance, or criticality, of the competencies they identified. In our research this was done, and interestingly the technical ability competency group was
Conclusion
The present study sought to identify a competency profile for future design engineers. Forty-two competencies were identified, divided into the following six competency groups (in descending order of criticality): personal attributes, project management, cognitive strategies, cognitive abilities, technical ability, and communication. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that the future design engineering role may be changing. Although technical competencies are forecast to remain equally
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