Category: Process Solution

The three legs of Work force skills development promoted by STIMS Institute, quoted in a recent article in Lexington Minuteman

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Lexington Minuteman, a newspaper well known in the New England area recently carried an article on November 28, 2013 in their ECONOMY section titled, “Skills gap has a high cost” authored by Spencer Buell and Caitlyn Kelleher Lexington@wickedlocal.com

An abstract from this article is cited below:
Three-legged approach for high-tech
……………….
In Lexington, K. “Subbu” Subramanian, a mechanical engineer and President of STIMS Institute Inc., said closing the skills gap to foster a more vibrant economy in the future is going to require building a triangle: Education and training are its two legs, with motivation to create and implement new solutions – the Transformational Skills serving as the base.

Triangle of Skills

The STIMS Institute, according to Dr. Subramanian is focused on developing physical, science-based technology innovation and management solutions. “There is a need to combine academic education and training application educations with a passion to create new solutions, Subramanian said. “This
triangle has to be created no matter what level we are going to. We are not thinking of the triangle. Nobody wants to come together to create a triangle.” The triangle needs to include educational institutions and businesses, he said, adding academic schools should take a lesson from vocational schools and encourage internships.

This year, Subramanian wrote the book “Thriving in the 21st Century Economy: Transformational Skills for Technical Professionals,” which focuses on the changing economy and the need for a new model for workers because of an increasing demand for high-tech skills.

“The parents have to push because their kids need the Transformational skills,’ Subramanian said. “The schools have a need because they have a social obligation. They can’t say we have high scores and we are good with that. They need to give kids the Transformational skills to get a job.” Businesses are not hiring, he said, because they want people with practical experience and Transformational skills.

Indeed, a National Manufacturing Institute study estimates that failure to fill 600,00O jobs due to a lack of qualified workers would cost the economy $67.8 billion in exports, $47.4 billion in foreign investment and $8.5 billion in lost research and development investment. Add that to that the $17.6 billion in unemployment insurance claims, $17.6 billion in lost income taxes and $6.6 billion in lost corporate taxes.

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Learn to swim against the tide of Binary Economy

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/thriving-in-the-21st-century-economy-k-subramanian/1115191210?ean=9780791860168

https://www.asme.org/products/books/thriving-21st-century-economy-transformational

It is an undeniable axiom of globalization: anyone in any job or profession has to be better than anyone else who can do the same job from a pool of workers across the globe. Conversely, those who can do a job in a similar manner to others around the globe will be rewarded for their effort at the lowest value at which the work can be procured from anyone else across the globe! Every worker will fall into one of these two extremes. Anyone in the middle will be ultimately swept to the low-labor-cost pool.
While there will be a natural tendency to be swept into the lower-wage pool, it will require a special effort to swim against the current to be associated with the limited few in the high-wage, high-reward pool. Swim against the stream and reach a high place (of New Solutions with identifiable impact) or be swept away into the global pool of low-cost resources (needed for Replication Solutions) is the true paradigm of globalization. There is little or no opportunity for treading water in this paradigm. This constant struggle to swim upstream and against the current is what is perceived as the volatility and uncertainty in the workplace. Suggestions such as higher education, higher SAT scores, and more grit and perseverance are all means to the same end. But as we have detailed in our book – see the links below – all of these have to be formatted toward identification, development, and exploitation of New Solutions using Transformational Skills as the means to this end.

http://ebooks.asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/book.aspx?bookid=657

New book authored by Dr. Subramanian and Prof. Rangan has been published by ASME Press.

Thriving in the 21st Century Economy:
Transformational Skills for Technical Professionals
By
Dr. K. Subramanian and Prof. U. Srinivasa Rangan

Subbu Book 2Thriving in the 21st Century Economy: Transformational Skills for Technical Professionals, co-authored by Dr K. Subramanian, President, STIMS Institute Inc., USA and Professor U. Srinivasa Rangan, Luksic Chair Professor of Global Studies, at Babson College has been published by the ASME Press. Copies of this book can be accessed at any of the following links:
http://www.amazon.com/Thriving-Century-Transformational-Technical-Professionals/dp/0791860167/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371673516&sr=1-1&keywords=Transformational+Skills+Subramanian

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/thriving-in-the-21st-century-economy-k-subramanian/1115191210?ean=9780791860168

https://www.asme.org/products/books/thriving-21st-century-economy-transformational

Below is the link for the image of the cover of the book along with reviewer’s comments:

ASME_Subbu_Cover_FINAL5

The following is a short summary of the book:
Technical professionals, represented by the short hand STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), face a crisis, especially in the United States. Fewer American students are interested in pursuing these disciplines in college. Even many professionals currently working in these areas discourage their children from following them into their profession, since they see few attractive and financially rewarding jobs and careers when compared to the IT or financial sector. As research budgets shrink in the public and private sectors, many professionals feel that their contributions are not valued. Some blame the outsourcing fad for this and some others believe that foreign professionals are taking their jobs. Amidst all this, senior managers in major industrial and technology firms expect technical professionals to manage their own careers rather than help the professionals to develop their abilities for such career management.
Drs. Subbu Subramanian and Srinivasa Rangan address these concerns through three critical and related questions:
1. What is the nature of the challenge facing STEM professionals in the twenty-first century global economy?
2. What are the reasons for it?
3. How should STEM professionals manage their careers in the future if they want to lead a professionally fulfilling and productive life?

At the outset, Subramanian and Rangan assert that, since the 1980s, the workplace in most industrial companies has been undergoing a rapid transformation largely due to two factors: globalization and business model revolution. Globalization is described as the outcome of Global Capitalism combined with evolutions in Digital Technology. The business model revolution is seen as the result of disaggregation of the value chain and its disbursement across the world. These new business models require a new type of professional skillset. The result of these two trends are pushing more firms to rely on a small cadre of high quality professionals to be problem solvers or solution providers and a much larger group of professionals (even with lower levels of technical skills as required), to be replicators of those solutions across the globe. As more firms across the world adopt this new model of workforce deployment, a binary labor force is emerging. The first part, consisting of leading technology professionals, specializes in creating and implementing new solutions. This is enhanced through the use of DT solutions, which aggregates information from across the globe. The other part of the labor force, required for lower skilled jobs, is finding their functions further de-skilled and de-localized because of DT driven automation and off-shoring. There appears to be no middle ground, which in the past employed a large number of technical professionals. All STEM professionals now face the challenge of adapting to this binary economy that is becoming the hallmark of the twenty-first century.

STEM professionals are experiencing angst because of their transition to new roles in this binary economy. Many who have invested years getting trained at advanced levels and acquiring specialized skills suddenly feel unable to create new solutions that are considered valuable.
Subramanian and Rangan argue that STEM professionals need to become exceptional and relentless solution providers. They must be able to identify new opportunities, convert such opportunities into complete and integrated solutions, and maximize the benefits from these solutions. These skills are not purely technical or managerial. Instead they are a combination of skills pertaining to Science, Engineering and Management. These Transformational Skills are:

• Identify a problem or opportunity and frame it as a “need”:
• Develop a Common Language
• Three Dimensional view of Core Capabilities and their deployment:
— As an individual
— As part or member of a team
— As part of the company or enterprise
— As part of the industry/community
• Develop the need into a “Solution”:
• Integrate Knowledge from all available sources (across the globe)
• Place emphasis on “Science”; Relentlessly use Portable Diagnostic Tools and methods, Analysis
techniques and Analytics
• “System Thinking”: Focus on the big picture and not merely on the pixels;
• Deploy the Science/Engineering/Management pertinent to the “solution” simultaneously (The
System Approach); Emphasize on mobile/portable diagnostic tools.
• Synthesize: Connect the dots leading to the “Solution”; Emphasis on Core Technology driven
ecosystems.
• Exploit the “Solution” and maximize the benefits:
• Focus on “End to End Innovation” = Idea X Use X Impact
Measure innovation in a scale of 1 to 125 (= 5X5X5 and not 1 to 5 scale in isolated silos). “Branding” as an outcome of End to End innovation
• “Emotional Intelligence”:
Find ways to be useful to others, which in turn benefits you.
Co-create value; I open the door for you, and you let me in as well.
Focus on end user (Customer) benefits as the primary goal and driver for innovation and entrepreneurships.

The authors then describe the roles of individual professionals, organizations, management, the Government and the educators. Each player is called upon to understand these Transformational Skills and integrate them into education as part of a Life Long Learning strategy. The authors conclude that this education is the only reliable pathway enabling technical professionals to thrive in the 21st Century economy.

Transformational Skills for Advanced Manufacturing

Transformational Skills For Advanced Mfg. – Feb. 2012IMG_2285Image

One day Seminar on 

Transformational Skills for Advanced Manufacturing

Dr. K. (Subbu) Subramanian

President, STIMS Institute

Lexington, Massachusetts, USA.

at

IIT – Chennai, India

February 24, 2012.

All manufacturing companies across the globe face two parallel needs:

  • Create and implement “New Solutions” for step change or large scale improvements
  • Execute tasks (with minimum demand for technical/professional skills) to replicate known manufacturing processes and solutions for incremental or continuous improvement in cost, quality and service.

The rapid growth of manufacturing sector in India has substantially benefitted from manufacturing process solutions already available from across the globe and replicating them.  But, there is an increasingly growing need to develop Advanced Manufacturing solutions whose implementation in shop floor will create a large scale impact. This is very essential for long term vitality and competitiveness of these companies and to many of their suppliers such as Machine Tool manufacturers, Tooling suppliers, and component fabricators, etc.

Skills required for advancements in manufacturing solutions are always a hybrid between Academic Knowledge and Industrial Know-how. They also require active collaboration across many industries and suppliers. Investments required for new manufacturing process solutions are always high and hence seen more risky. Above all, they require people who can identify new opportunities and Transform them into solutions of commercial impact. These Transformational Skills for Advanced Manufacturing will require formal education for manufacturing professionals with sound academic background and proven track record of success in their current industrial profession.

This  seminar addresses the following questions to benefit those engaged either directly or indirectly in manufacturing of products.

Ö    What are the emerging needs for competitiveness of Manufacturing Companies and Industries in the global market place?

Ö   Need for “New solutions” that create a step change Vs. Current practices of lean and Six Sigma?

Ö   Transformational Skills necessary to identify, create and implement advanced manufacturing solutions.

Ö   Education and Training programs required for Transformational Skills for Advanced Manufacturing?

This meet will provide an opportunity to share the views of practicing engineers/managers with the speaker who has been engaged in addressing the issues with his vast experience in the manufacturing field. The participants are encouraged to bring a set of identified needs that are relevant to their company. This seminar specifically looks at the needs of professionals and their requirements pertaining to education and skill development for grooming them into successful and high potential employees. There will be an opportunity to discuss these needs in a group setting as well as one-on-one with the speaker and other faculty members during this seminar.