Category: Engineering

Ensuring that the next generation of engineers and scientist are given all the tools they need to succeed in their studies is of paramount importance to not only the industry, but also the UK as a whole. Over the last few months, the UK has seen some great success stories from the next generation of engineers in both national and international competitions.

Here, we take a look at some of the recent achievements of students around the UK, whilst focusing on the successes of students from Northern Ireland.

UK Students Come Runner Up In International Competition

Three students from a school in Loughborough competed on the international stage against other young scientific and engineering minds. Grace Lord, Brendan Miralles and Aalia Sellar’s project came an impressive 2^nd place in the international competition. Over 2020 international students from 51 countries took part in the competition.

After winning the prestigious GSK UK Young Engineers of the Year title at The Big Bang UK Young Scientists & Engineers Competition, the trio headed to China to take on other students from around the globe. Their project, entitled ‘Music Splash’, came runner up in the International CASTIC (China Adolescents Science & Technology Innovation Contest) category. Whilst on the trip, the three budding scientists received interest from a Chinese business to develop their app.

The app uses machine learning to analyse music performance and provides feedback to help the user to improve and work towards grading. The students say “it guides you to instant perfection and is like a music teacher in an app.”

Northern Ireland Student Wins GSK UK Young Scientist of the Year 2019

A student from St Mary’s College in Derry/London Derry took home the GSK UK Young Scientist of the Year 2019 at The Big Bang UK Young Scientist & Engineers Competition. Maeve Stillman’s project, which was entitled, “Investigating the Effect of Activated Charcoal on the Absorptions of Medications” saw off competition from other budding scientists and engineers around the UK and focused on how activated charcoal supplements affect the absorption of everyday or common medicines.

Speaking of her award win, Maeve Stillman told The Big Bang Competition UK: “It feels so surreal to have won! This is my third year at The Big Bang Fair and every year it’s so exciting, I would definitely recommend other young people getting involved. I’m going to use the prize money and experiences that I’ve won to help further my future in STEM.”

The team here at European Springs Ireland are extremely pleased to see our up-and-coming scientists and engineers receiving the recognition they deserve.

A-Level Top Grades Rise In Northern Ireland

Following the last month’s A-Level results day, there has been a rise in the proportion of top grades awarded to pupils in Northern Ireland, with just over 30% of students awarded A* or A grades.

There are now just under 40% of all students taking at least one STEM subject as part of their A-Levels, with a steady increase in the uptake in science, technology, engineering and maths subjects continuing. Maths once again remained the most popular A-Level subject among Northern Irish students, with more than one in 10 entries.

It’s extremely encouraging to see the next generation of students coming through college with such promising results. As experienced spring manufacturers, the team here at European Springs Ireland take great pride in ensuring we continually keep our finger on the pulse of all the latest engineering related news. Be sure to regularly check in on our blog to keep up-to-date with the latest news from around the industry.

In this article, we consider whether enough is being done to improve diversity in the manufacturing and engineering sectors. We will discuss where we stand in comparison to other countries and sectors, the benefits of improving, and strategies for individual businesses to improve their local working diversity.

What Does Diversity in Manufacturing Mean?

In the 21^st century, a diverse workforce means supporting male, female, trans and fluid genders of different ages and races. To achieve great diversity within your business, you need to start by first becoming aware and fully understanding how to best appeal to people of different gender, age and race. For example, this may involve ensuring that younger generations can attain the skills they will need to pursue careers that rely on good education in science, maths or English.

How Do I Attain Diversity in My Business?

Encouraging diversity in your business requires you to take a step back and consider your current setting; are you employing a near-equal number of men and women, would a member from the LGBTQ+ community feel comfortable working in your environment, have you advertised your business in such a way that encourages minorities to apply for positions with you?

Remember to think of how your business looks from the outside too; if you are finding yourself using the excuse that your company’s diversity is poor because you don’t receive many applications from minorities, then it may be that they don’t perceive your company as a place that would make them feel welcome.

If your company only employs men, then that is all that your potential applicants will see, so unless you find ways to tell them that they will be accepted, they may assume that your company is selectively hiring men.

You need to encourage women and minorities in your job adverts and marketing efforts if you want to make them feel welcome, especially if they are going to be the first minority in your business.

How Do I Retain Diversity Once I’ve Hired It?

Once you’ve solved your application problem – if you had one – your next step is ensuring that they stay with your business. This means committing to making them feel welcome for the long term. To accomplish this, they are going to need someone who will listen to their needs, but most importantly, someone who they feel comfortable talking to when something needs changing.

This may be something as small as offering a dairy-free alternative in the break room, or it could be a fundamental change to their working patterns. For example, some religious minorities may need to take specific holidays. It is important both the employee and employer, to maintain excellent communication to ensure that these obstacles are successfully navigated. On the side of a new minority employee, they should give you suitable notice of any important religious holidays or issues they might face in the future where possible.

As the employer, you should encourage them that they have someone they can take these concerns to – you or another high-ranking member of staff – before issues arise. If your employee has failed to communicate some difficulties to you, ask yourself why they have found it difficult. It could be that they aren’t comfortable or feel embarrassed about their difference.

You can solve this by changing their point of contact; if you have someone from a minority in a high ranking position then they can serve as a role model for new hires – this could improve their motivation and productivity too.

Making continuous small changes can also make a big difference. Take the initiative and install an accessible or gender-neutral toilet. Offer vegetarian and vegan snacks, or engage the business in celebrations like Pride month.

What are the Benefits of Improving My Company’s Diversity?

In an article published by The Manufacturer in 2018, it was speculated that the UK has an annual shortfall of at least 20,000 engineers. Regarding solving this nationwide crisis, it is vital that we encourage a range of individuals to take up engineering, and one of the methods we should be taking to accomplish this is to improve our diversity. It’s thought that more than £11bn a year is lost in Engineering due to LGBTQ+ individuals feeling unable to be themselves at work, leading to a 30% reduction in productivity (InterEngineering 2016).

Aside from just minorities, manufacturing and engineering are still facing huge issues; simply encouraging more women to enrol in the sector would be a huge step forward. Of all engineering professionals in 2018, only 12% were women. To solve this issue, companies need to educate younger generations that they will be accepted in STEM subjects, degrees and careers. This may mean taking special care to encourage diversity in any apprenticeships or work experience that you are running.

It has been noted that businesses who gain traction in one area of diversity have an easier time improving other types of diversity too. This means that taking a step-by-step approach can be very effective and can also help with implementing attainable goals.

In an article titled, ‘The Business Benefits of Promoting Diversity and Inclusion’, it was found that businesses with a healthy gender balance are more likely to outperform their competitors, so consider the fact that perhaps you can’t afford to not be a diverse business in today’s market.

We are dedicated to providing coverage on the skills gap in manufacturing and engineering, and this includes raising awareness about how diversity can positively impact your business. If you need high-quality spring manufacturers, speak to us for more information about our products and practices.

One of the latest pushes in manufacturing and engineering across the world is to develop products that are increasingly eco-friendly. Cars are one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gasses on our planet, so making the switch to electric is a massive feat of modern engineering that might genuinely change our world for the better.

In this article, we will consider the many benefits of swapping to electric, as well as how these vehicles function and some of the key thinkers behind its propulsion.

The Benefits of Going Electric

Fueling a pure electric car could cost a third of the price of traditional petrol and diesel tanks. Buying an electric vehicle (EV) is economical, but many people are still resistant to the idea of investing in one. It’s easy to understand why the public might be reluctant to make the switch currently, but hopefully, as EVs become more popular, these challenges will be easier to overcome.

For example, one of the big worries that prospective owners of electric vehicles face is the lack of electric charging points. For those who live in rural areas, the feasibility of owning an EV doesn’t make sense if there will be nowhere to charge it.

Similarly, a lot of people own cars for the sense of freedom that they afford. An EV, on the other hand, doesn’t currently offer the same sense of security. The fear of running out of charge whilst driving an electric vehicle is a real one, and it even has a name – range anxiety – but in real life situations, there are few differences to breaking down in a petrol or diesel car.

In the event that your electric car ran out of charge, you would simply be required to phone your breakdown provider and be towed to the nearest charge point. You may need to specify that your breakdown provider brings a flat-bed tow truck because a rope or lift-tow could damage an EV.

Currently, there are as many as 16,500 connectors in the UK, and the aim is to raise this to 100,000 by 2020. Currently, ASDA is one of the best stores to charge your car at with chargers featuring at 19% of their stores, but these figures need to increase before our country can make a wholehearted change to electric.

The Importance of Going Electric

Going electric is not just about the cheaper costs of fuel, maintenance, and current discounts for early buyers. It’s about saving the environment by using cars with far lower greenhouse gas emissions – EVs don’t even have exhaust pipes because they don’t generate the same nasty fuels. In fact, driving an EV could reduce your carbon emissions from driving by more than 66% in the UK. It is forecast that by 2040, more than half of all new car sales globally will be EVs, meaning that the UK is going to have to work on raising those 80,000 plus charging points.

How Electric Vehicles Work

Electric cars are much easier to understand than petrol or diesel engines. While a fossil-fuel powered vehicle needs all kinds of extra bits and pieces to keep the temperature of different parts of the vehicle in check, plus the exhaust pipe to chivvy the fumes out of the vehicle, an electric vehicle simply requires the electrical battery and a place to be charged. This could make the maintenance of electrical vehicles much cheaper in the future as fixing them will be far simpler.

Key Developers

Elon Musk is often the name that comes up during discussions about electric cars. As the head of Tesla, he’s had a lot to say about the limitations of fossil fuels that our society is currently facing. For the name of the first electric car inventor, though, you can look back as far as 1837 to the Scottish inventor, Robert Anderson, however, this car’s battery was not rechargeable and therefore not nearly as economical as the systems we can see today.

Electric car development has come a long way, quite literally – Tesla’s electric Roadster has even been launched into space, and you can watch a live stream of it from the video below:

Electrical cars are undoubtedly the future of travel – with fossil fuels continuing to decline, it is unlikely that we will have many options other than to adopt the electric car. Manufacturers of EVs still face many challenges before they can convince the public to pick up their product, but we’re confident that they can solve it. EVs decked out with solar panels to promote longer-lasting charges is just one solution that is currently being explored by engineers in this sector.

The fate of our future lies in our ability to overcome problems to provide cleaner, better and more efficient ways of living life. Luckily, innovation is at the heart of all things manufacturing, and as spring manufacturers we will continue to work on developing our springs to provide you with the best products available on the market today.

The new year is well and truly underway and those all-important resolutions you made have probably been broken and completely forgotten about. Whilst it can be difficult to find motivation for personal resolutions, you should find it considerably easier to try and stick to any resolutions you made for your business. If you haven’t already come up with some resolutions for your manufacturing business, it’s still not too late to get the ball rolling.

In this article, we will discuss some of the resolutions you should consider making this year to have a genuine impact on the manufacturing industry.

Focus on Productivity

In recent years, a lot has been made about the drop in productivity across the manufacturing industry. As one of your top resolutions for 2019, you should strongly consider placing plenty of emphasis on ensuring your staff are working as productively as possible. You can do your bit to close the gap on the declining productivity of the manufacturing industry by utilising a few simple steps.

A good starting place when trying to identify areas of your business which may be unproductive is to see if there are any bottlenecks in your current process. One way to quickly identify any issues with your current process is by investing in good manufacturing management software. These programs make it extremely easy to spot any problematic areas of your business, so you can act quickly and solve any issues.

You can, of course, take the time to audit each section of your business yourself, without any help from software. This can be a time-consuming process, so be sure to set achievable goals throughout the year to ensure you are keeping on track and making progress towards achieving greater productivity within your business.

Fill the Manufacturing Skills Gap

It’s no secret that there is a huge skills shortage in the manufacturing industry, and if steps are not taken to address this, we could be faced with a genuine industry-wide crisis within the next few years. It’s absolutely vital that businesses across the UK take the time to think about ways in which they could help to fill the manufacturing skills gap. However, there are several ways that even the smallest manufacturing companies can have a profound effect on the future of the industry.

You could play your part in ensuring that skilled manufacturing jobs are filled by running an apprenticeship scheme in your business. Not only would you be playing a vital role in training the next generation of manufacturing minds, but you would also have some extra help within your business on a relatively low wage. It’s also worth considering that once the apprentices finish their course, they’ll probably be looking for full-time employment with you, so you’ll be benefiting from some guaranteed highly skilled workers in a few years’ time.

Another fantastic way of filling the manufacturing skills gap is simply allowing your employees time to train in other areas of your business which they may be interested in. Training your existing staff in roles they haven’t previously undertaken can potentially unearth a member of staff who excels in another area of your business. It’s absolutely vital that you allow your staff to upskill, through collaborative working and by funding internal and external training courses, which is, of course, beneficial to the individual and your business in the long run.

Manage Your Staff More Effectively

Our final suggestion for a resolution you should stick to as a manufacturing business owner is to manage your staff more effectively. Staff are the lifeblood of any company and without them, your business will come to a grinding halt, so it’s of paramount importance that you do everything you can to keep them as happy as possible.

Here are a few simple steps you could take to ensure you are managing your staff as effectively as possible:

• Provide Incentives for Good Work – This doesn’t need to be anything too expensive or elaborate. Something as simple as an employee of the month award, or regular praise for staff members who are consistently providing work of a high standard.
• Hold Regular Development Meetings – Taking a genuine interest in your employees’ future aspirations is a fantastic way to ensure they feel valued at your company. Allowing employees to make a personal development plan and enabling your staff to carry out regular training as they work towards this is a great way to boost staff morale.
• Allow Staff to Make Mistakes – This may sound counterproductive, but allowing your staff to make mistakes and learn from them is a fantastic management technique. Rather than micromanaging every aspect of an employee’s work, allowing them free reign can have massive benefits, from increased morale to finding new and better ways to carry out existing processes.

As expert spring manufacturers, we take great pride in ensuring that we are consistently doing everything we can to improve our processes and operations each year. Here at European Springs Ireland, we will be keeping to all of the resolutions we made, and we hope that you will too.