How manufacturers can develop young engineering talent

Every term, Conestoga College and the University of Waterloo send another wave of students into the shops and engineering offices of Waterloo Region. They arrive with a solid grounding in the theory and the software. What they don’t have yet is the judgement that only comes from making real parts for real customers.

That gap is the manufacturer’s job to close. Here is how we think about it.

Pair them with your most experienced people, early

The fastest way to learn a trade is to stand next to someone who has done it for thirty years. Don’t park new people at a desk to “get familiar with things”. Put each student or apprentice with a senior machinist, welder or designer from the first week, and make that pairing deliberate. The senior learns to teach, the student learns the hundred small things that never make it into a textbook, and the knowledge stays in the building.

Give them big projects, and let them grow into them

People rise to the size of the problem in front of them. A student who only ever deburrs parts will learn to deburr parts. A student who owns a real project, a fixture, a frame, a customer’s first prototype, learns design for manufacture, scheduling, communication and accountability all at once.

Big projects carry a real chance of failure. That is the point. Set a stretch goal, give them room to get it wrong, and be there when they do. The lesson from a part that didn’t fit is one nobody forgets.

Back them 110%, start to finish

A good co-op term or apprenticeship is a marathon, not a sprint. It should be intense enough that the student is proud of what they finished. That only works if the company supports them from the first day to the last: the tools they need, time with the people who know, honest feedback, and credit when the work goes out the door.

Why it matters to the people buying parts

A shop that develops its people makes better parts. Engineers who learned to design next to the machinists who make their designs catch manufacturing problems before they reach the floor. That is the same idea behind ManuConnect: put the people who design a part and the people who make it in the same conversation.

Have a part that needs designing, or a design that needs making? Send it to us and meet the team who will make it.