CAM-I Agile Manufacturing Technician

Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing-International
The Agile Manfacturing Technician

The 21st Century manufacturing enterprise will emply people differently. And teh people it employs will be different from the typical 1960s or 1970s or 1980s employee. Not suprisingly, these employees will have to be educated, or re-educated, differently.

In next generation manufacturing enterprises, technicians and technologists will work in teams, supported by high technology assists, and make autonomous and significant technical decisions, moving very quickly from one responsibility to the next. Whether they enter the workforce directly out of high school, after completion of a community college degree or certificate, or after graduating with a baccalaureate or higher degree, technologists in manufacturing enterprises will need a strong background in mathematics, science, and manufacturing technology and engineering. They also will need the interpersonal and communications skills to work in self-organizing interdisciplinary teams.

A Vision of the Agile Manufacturing Technician
A flexible and adaptable team member within a rapidly changing technological and multi-cultural organizational environment, able to learn and apply evolving state-of-the-art manufacturing skills and knowledge, prepared at the Associate level to be productive in immediate employment or to transfer to a baccalaureate program in engineering technology or related fields.

This vision helps guide the development and implementation of ATE's new learning processes and resources. Developing and enhancing the skills necessary to help today's students excel in the future is an ssential consideration for ATE's curriculum development, distance learning, and teacher enhancement activities. The Agile Skill Set includes:

Math and Science Knowledge
Underlying the application skills that technicians need to be effective is knowledge--knowledge in mathematics through analytical geometry, finite mathematics, and elementary probability and statistics.

Manufacturing Enterprise Knowledge
To function within the agile manufacturing enterprise, technicians must understand their roles within the context of the enterprise. Among other benefits, this knowledge helps technicians apply skills and knowledge to effectively and efficiently plan, organize, implement, measure, and control manufacturing processes.

Communciation Skills
To function in a small, autonomous team or work unit, often organizally or geographically seperated, the technician must be able to communicate within his or her team and with those in the interactive system.

Problem Solving Skills
Technicians and teams will have to solve complex problems in the 21st Century. The pace of change in agile manufacturing will be such that no centralized body will be able to maintain currency in all aspects of the enterprise.

Design Skills
The industry trend toward integrated product and process development and the wider range of responsiblities for technicians, means that manufacturing technicians will need rudimentary design skills.

Information Systems Skills
Agile manufacturing enterprises will be agile because of the rapid dissemination of information across electronic networks and because of the flexible cooperative work environments information technology makes possible.

Management Skills
The traditional roles in management are changing dramatically in agile enterprises. As workers are given more responsibility and authority, they also must take on some of the activities that were traditionally reserved for managers.

Please submit comments and suggestions to AMEN project coordinator.
January 26, 1996