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Apprentices: vital for business success?

08 March 2021

Food Processing spoke to NMiTE, a disruptive force in delivering higher education, and its food industry partners about the importance of engineering apprenticeships for the food and beverage industry. 

Q: Are engineering apprentices still important for the food industry?

Toby Kinnaird, head of Partnerships at NMITE: Engineering apprenticeships are the backbone of the manufacturing industry, developing a talent pipeline that keeps factories running. Employers benefit by bringing people in at the ground level, shaping them and instilling company loyalty, while the apprentices also benefit by gaining recognised qualifications and vital work experience while getting paid.
More recently, the challenges have been around the existing apprenticeship standards, which are job specific – keeping up with the pace of change in manufacturing. Food manufacturers need higher-qualified, broader-experienced engineers to develop, run, monitor and maintain these complex interdisciplinary automated systems and the arrival of higher level and degree apprenticeships in Engineering support these goals. NMITE hopes to address this need by providing degree apprenticeships in manufacturing engineering, to build on our partnerships with industry and deliver a programme that works. NMITE apprenticeships will follow on from the launch of its Accelerated MEng in Integrated Engineering.
 
Andrew Brodie, people & communications director at Avara: We are investing heavily in creating a modern high-tech food supply chain and already run engineering programmes at apprentice, degree apprentice and degree level as well as supporting professional engineering development. We are working with NMITE as a partner to support the growth in engineering qualifications and careers at degree and apprentice level in the next few years as these will be vital to our business success and growth.”
 
Q: Do you think the skills required by engineers in the food industry are changing as we move towards smarter factories? And how do you see existing food industry engineers adapting to the growing use of digital solutions, and is there a growing need for digital for digital skills?
 
Toby Kinnaird: Engineers need to understand a much broader range of technical skills because of the integrated nature of the equipment. Machinery is a complex set of mechanical, electrical and informational systems which can require knowledge of controls systems including programming, user interfaces and communication protocols. It is difficult to recruit engineers with these interdisciplinary skills."
 
Marcus Billig, site manager of Avara Foods Hereford: Due to the complexity of manufacturing processes the requirement for further skills and qualifications, including at degree level, is no longer just for senior engineers, development programmes have to be available for colleagues at all points in their work life not just those embarking on their career. Understanding how the entire system works and the interconnectivity is critical, it’s not just about an individual machine.


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