A matter of priorities
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Engineers are wearily resigned to the wider world’s general indifference over how something is produced. Most people are far more concerned with how effectively an engineered product works and how much it will cost them and, on the whole, glaze over at the first mention of the manufacturing process behind it.
Natural enough I suppose, but Don Potts, an environmental advisor to Volvo, makes the valid point that if we want to shift our economy onto a genuinely sustainable base we all need to be a lot more aware of the whole picture.
As reported by The Engineer Online this week, Potts has highlighted the sometimes rather conflicting set of priorities facing vehicle manufacturers as they seek to roll out emissions-busting cars at a price cash-strapped and credit-starved consumers can afford.
In the face of those pressures, and the bewildering variety of incentives and penalties increasingly applied by governments and other regulators, where does investment in new, more efficient manufacturing operations fit in? We can easily widen the debate to ask how an industry’s wider supply chain is supposed to make the investments in the equipment, the processes and, perhaps most pertinently of all, the skills needed to create the world-class manufacturing economy we all want to see.
It comes back to those ‘green jobs’ again, propelled by the upheavals at the Vestas wind turbine facility to the top of the summer agenda. Of course, we all want to see the
Andrew Lee, Editor
Readers' comments (2)
Paul Ilott - A matter of priorities | 5 Aug 2009 4:29 pm
I quite understand how engineers are resigned to the indifference to how things are produced. Matter of fact inventors are also resigned to the indifference engineers are to how products are originated. It was human ingenuity that got man out of the Stone Age and the nations without it are still stuck in it.
But governance (as in politics) is a system of control and an economic predator. It is based on doctrine but engineering and its originators are essentially pragmatic and part of an economic system; it takes on a corporate form of management. Engineering and technologies easily fit into a democratic system but it is politicism that is the liability to a nation.
Engineering and technologies be compatible with government only when democracy assumes the structural form of a corporation.
I'll vote for that!
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David - A matter of priorities | 6 Aug 2009 7:25 pm
Unfortunately this is the world we live in; the only thing people are interested in is the price.
People seem incapable of asking anything more interesting than ‘how much did it cost?’
When I explain engineering details to people I find that they are actually interested, so long as I don't make it too long-winded.
I've tried explaining nanotechnology to people and they are really interested in it. David
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