Weijun Shen loves engineering, but he believes in people. Shen sat in his unadorned office on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock on a crisp fall morning. There is a composition notebook sitting on his desk, the kind that can be found for a couple of bucks at any grocery store. The notebook clashes with the thick engineering textbooks and technical manuals on his bookshelf; they cannot be found for a couple of bucks, and they cannot be found at the grocery store.
Yet Shen, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has given the humble note-book all it can handle. Mathematical formulations and an engineer’s quick shorthand dot the pages, most of it likely to fly past the comprehension of a garden-variety human. The book is open, but it may as well be double padlocked as far as accessibility goes.
Weijun Shen
But Shen is not inaccessible. He is less than a year removed from getting his Ph.D at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the enthusiasm of a young academic comes off him in waves. He smiles as he speaks, with a voice that matches his smile. He clearly loves this stuff, and he loves presenting it to people.
“My work is focusing on additive manufacturing,” Shen said. “It’s actually a very broad group of things. Additive manufacturing can be new techniques, new materials and working on different kinds of applications.”
“Manufacturing” is a large term and even larger field. On one hand, the concept of manufacturing predates Henry Ford. On the other hand, 3D printing, automation and artificial intelligence have made manufacturing a hyperspecialized area of study for fields as far flung as engineering, mathematics, computer programming and business administration.
3D printers, lathe machines and more help prepare students
for the future of manufacturing. (Photo by Jane Colclasure)
How things get made — and made quickly — impacts everyone from the workers on a factory floor all the way to the CEO. It affects how businesses promote themselves, how innovators create new products and, perhaps most importantly, how workforce education changes from year to year.
“Those are big-dollar investments, big employment opportunities, cutting-edge stuff,” said Randy Zook, president and CEO of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce/Associated Industries of Arkansas.
Randy Zook, Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce/ Associated Industries of Arkansas. Photo by Sarah Oden
Part of Shen’s job is to stay abreast of the art of manufacturing, keeping one foot in the present and another in the future. He realizes that when people discuss automation and robotics, both prime tools for manufacturing, the conversation can quickly swing to AI. And that can be a problem.
While jitters about AI replacing human workers seem to apply to just about every professional sector under the sun, they cast an especially long shadow over manufacturing. Plenty of products can already be made and assembled by machines, after all, and it is easy to foresee what might happen when the machines themselves can learn the tricks of the trade.
Shen is not so sure. He believes technical creativity, very much a human trait, is just as vital as machine learning, and he does not see that changing anytime soon.
Robotic assembly tools await students at Pulaski Tech. (Photo by Jane Colclasure)
“You cannot consider every situation and pretrain a model to do that,” Shen said. “You always need a guide to do that. AI cannot replace a person in a very short time. It can be a very good tool to assist a person. You can have assistance from AI, but AI is not that creative. You need to focus on some creative things and look outside the textbook because textbooks are old, and if those things can be written down in a textbook, they can be learned by AI.”
Arkansas manufacturers are doing their part to equip schools like Pulaski Tech and ensure a pipeline of future workers. (Photos by Jane Colclasure)
Summer DeProw chucked the textbooks a long time ago. As chancellor at the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College in North Little Rock, she oversees a booming industrial manufacturing department that links students with up-to-the-minute tools and technologies. DeProw’s doctorate is in higher education, not engineering, but a person can be forgiven for thinking otherwise. On a late weekday afternoon, she guides a visitor through UA-PTC’s sprawling manufacturing and robotics facilities, chatting with faculty members and looking absolutely at home among 3D printers, massive automated lathe machines and robotic assembly tools.
Summer DeProw (Photo by Jane Colclasure)
3D printing, a cornerstone of the additive manufacturing that Shen studies, is an especially valuable asset allowing for the creation of complex parts that not only power machines but also give students a tangible real-time model of what they may be studying.
That can be important because, as DeProw pointed out, most modern manufacturing technology requires both precision and know-how.
“I don’t know about you,” DeProw said, “but when I was in high school, we learned two axes, X and Y. These machines have five.”
Administrators at two- and four-year colleges all know how to make a lot out of limited resources, but still, it is hard to out-horse-trade DeProw. Much of UA-PTC’s manufacturing lab is taken up by modern, complex machines from computerized-manufacturing leader Haas Automation, made possible through a grant from the Gene Haas Foundation. When not going after grants, DeProw is roping in experts to ensure UA-PTC manufacturing students stay ahead of the times.
“Companies such as Georg Fischer, L’Oréal, Dassault Falcon Jet and Remington are on our advisory councils,” DeProw said, “and we’d love to have more. They come in and look at the curriculum, and we get down into the nitty-gritty. You’ve got competent faculty that know how to teach combined with a lab plus those advisory councils giving us that expertise and sharing what they’re planning to make in the future.”
Yet Arkansas’ leading manufacturing companies are not simply sharing suggestions out of the goodness of their own hearts. Their involvement ensures there will be a pipeline from UA-PTC straight to their own offices and production floors.
“Those companies in the advisory council meetings will come to a consensus on items that are just nonnegotiable to learn,” DeProw said. “We know from feed-back that having both textbook learning plus going and actually working on the machines really builds a great employee.”
Having workforce education programs such as the ones found at UA-PTC is a vital and much-needed catalyst for growth. Both U.S. Steel and rebar-manufacturer Hybar have opened plants in northeast Arkansas, investing billions. Big investment is also on the way for south Arkansas, home to one of the world’s largest deposits of lithium. Businesses continue to sprout in north-west Arkansas as the population continues to grow, and Little Rock remains a hub for industry and commerce.
“We’ve got a lot of opportunities from one end of the state to the other,” Zook said. “We need young people to get prepared to take advantage of the opportunities. The fundamental as-set that the state can provide is a trainable, prepared, capable, motivated workforce. It’s an absolutely essential ingredient in the formula.”
Of all those necessary attributes for a work force, “prepared” may be the most important. As manufacturing technology continues to advance, the onus will fall on institutions capable of training future employees who can handle precision tools, manage equipment automation and, yes, optimize AI.
“We have a lot of companies and a lot of supportive institutions here,” Shen said. “Our university is preparing students for that, and our faculty is aware of the challenges. We are moving our focus from traditional education on mechanical engineering to put more emphasis on automation and robotics.”
READ ALSO: Empathy Health Announces $7.6M Funding Round for Sober Sidekick Platform
