ADMI offers a masters for engineers Five universities partner to provide industry-focused program

2001 | Plant Magazine | Joe Terrett

While industry struggles with a shortage of professional engineers, companies face another problem: helping the engineers they do have upgrade their knowledge and skills in advancing technology areas. Enter the newly created Advanced Design and Manufacturing Institute (ADMI) in Mississauga, Ont., the result of a partnership that began with McMaster University, the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo, the University of Western Ontario and now Queens University. Working with representatives from industry, they have launched a masters degree program in design and manufacturing, with an emphasis on business management. "There has been a large number of executive style programs--particularly MBAs--but not many aimed at the engineering community, where someone can get an enhanced post graduate degree without having to go back to school on a formal basis," explains David Heaslip, ADMI's executive director. Called the "ADMI Masters Degree in Design and Manufacturing," the program will address this need for companies like Celestica Inc., a contract electronics manufacturer. As part of a fast-growing industry, it's also experiencing high growth. Revenues of $9.8 billion in 2000 were up 84% over 1999 and the company is picking up facilities all over the world. "There's a real need for more technical depth as technology becomes more complex and we do more of the things that the OEMs have done," says John Yealland, vice-president, corporate technology with Celestica who is one of the industry representatives on the ADMI program committee. "Having the business management skills is a plus. It allows people to move quickly through the company as it grows." Involved in engineering for years, Yealland sees many engineers after five or 10 years, who want to enhance their degrees facing a choice: focus on the technical or the management side. "For a lot of them, that's a tough decision. They've done a lot of technical work and they don't want to give it up, yet they're more exposed to the business decisions. The ideal thing is a combination of the two and that's part of what this [program] provides," says Yealland. The ADMI degree's split is about 70% technical, 30% business. "The group of engineers who are really going to benefit have an undergraduate degree, need to run with new technology and provide leadership within their businesses," says Paul Olinski, manager of training and development at Babcock & Wilcox Canada, an engineering firm in Cambridge, Ont. What makes it unique is the template of criteria that business has provided, says Olinski, who sits on the ADMI's board of directors. "It's a collaborative program where each course has several people, so it's being taught by the best available for that topic." The challenge was to get four, and now five universities to work together. "It's like getting four or five companies to work together," says Grant Allen, chairman of ADMI's founding board and the former president and CEO of the MMO. He was one of a handful of academics and industry representatives that launched the initiative. Back to school Based on a program run in the UK, ADMI is the central point that the industry and university partners work through to combine their academic strengths, best practices and technology innovations. The four original universities each provided seed money, which was matched by Materials & Manufacturing Ontario (MMO) for a total of about $200,000, but when it's up and running at full capacity, ADMI will be self-supporting. The first course, offered in March, attracted 18 candidates. Heaslip says 35 have signed up with the participating universities. Candidates register at one of the partner universities under the ADMI program and select courses presented by any of them. It takes 10 courses to complete the degree over about three years. Each one, accommodating up to 20 students, is presented as a set of two, four-day weekend modules, each module consisting of 30 hours of lectures, discussion and application work. The modules are separated by a six-week interval for assignments and projects. "Compare that to a typical MBA at $60,000 or more and it's a relatively inexpensive exercise." Many companies will cover the cost, and happily. For Celestica, with 8,000 employees in the Toronto area alone, there are literally hundreds of engineers who could take advantage of this program. The company has a tuition refund program in place for education and training that is in line with the company's business objectives, and it's glad to pay. "You...really can't afford to have [people] going back to school full time for a couple of years or losing them permanently, which is often the case in this industry," says Yealland. But ADMI hopes the degree provides a long-term goal. By developing engineers' technical and business skills, they'll become more effective drivers of change in Canadian manufacturing. Joe Terrett can be reached at jterrett@rmpublishing.com. BACK TO NEWS