Engineering news
More than 20 students will form the first cohort at the new 'faculty on the factory floor' set up by Coventry University and Unipart Manufacturing in the city.
The Institute for Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering (AME), a £32 million collaboration between the university and the automotive engineering firm, said it had exceeded the number of initial applications it had expected. There had been interest from all over the country in its three-year BEng and four-year MEng courses, the AME said, which are intended to provide students with hands-on experience of engineering on the shopfloor at a purpose-built facility in Coventry.
The aim is to ensure that engineering graduates gain the practical experience they need to manufacture products and improve and innovate processes. The venture is backed by Unipart's joint venture with Eberspächer in the city, which designs and makes exhaust and fuel systems. The project is being funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and Unipart, and is being run in conjunction with Coventry University, where students will spend some of their time.
Senior management at the AME said they had passed their first year target. “It’s a further indicator of the sector’s growing popularity and the desire from undergraduates to participate in activity-led learning that gives them real world manufacturing experience,” the AME said.
Studying at AME will be split into two 16-week semesters each academic year, with students focusing on specific industry disciplines and then working in teams to apply what they have learned to commercial shopfloor projects. Over the course of the three years this will include manufacturing processes and materials, quality and metrology, advanced manufacturing and automation, design and sustainability and strategic management. In the final year, they will have the choice to specialise in lean systems and production control or engineering materials and manufacturing technology.
“This is a fantastic first response to what we are looking to achieve at AME and shows that we’ve certainly got the student world excited,” Wendy Garner, associate head of mechanical, automotive and manufacturing at Coventry University, said.
“Our courses have been designed to meet industry’s need for graduates that can have an immediate impact on the shopfloor and also help to ensure our students gain skills that accelerate their own career paths.”
She continued: “External construction work on the new 1,700 square metre manufacturing hub is nearly complete and this will provide the focus for a lot of the activity and will house more than £2m of robotics, CNC tube manipulation machinery, metrology equipment and simulation software.
“The undergraduates will be learning on cutting-edge technology, not to mention working with Unipart engineers who have years of experience. It’s a real win-win situation for them.”
AME, which has received £7.9m of HEFCE funding, is also recruiting for ten postgraduates as part of its first year of activity.