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The Home Automation Challenge provides an opportunity for talented apprentices to compete in an innovative design and manufacturing challenge and is open to teams of apprentices from companies, colleges and training providers of engineering and manufacturing technologies.
The rebranding to Apprentice Automation Challenge reflects the expanded scope of the competition, now asking teams to design a product that addresses key challenges such as energy efficiency at home, corporate social responsibility or the circular economy.
For the first time the competition will also be opening its doors to international participants and inviting teams from across the world to register.
Rob Armstrong is a Fellow of the IMechE and the Head of Manufacturing Process Capability at Leonardo, which employs a number of apprentices. He says that the Apprentice Automation Challenge is a key part of the company's apprenticeship scheme.
“We make the challenge a part of the second year of our apprenticeships at Leonardo,” he says. “We see it as a valuable opportunity for our apprentices to get experience in areas to develop a product and think about the business case, as well as the engineering that goes into it and the engineering life cycle.
“We involve our business, manufacturing and technical apprentices in the Challenge, so they get used to working together in different disciplines. It can be difficult sometimes for business people and engineers to understand each other, so we try and get that started early in their career by entering them into the Challenge.”
Armstrong is not only supporting the Apprentice Automation Challenge through sponsorship but also mentoring the teams taking part. He believes that the Challenge is a great way of developing the participants’ skills across a range of different disciplines:
“It tests their skills in various engineering disciplines, such as mechanical engineering, electronics, software and manufacturing,” he says. “It is also about creating a product, so they have to think about the market for their design, as well as costs, profits and how they will sell the product.”
Ultimately, Armstrong says that the Challenge is all about testing the apprentices before they enter real-world scenarios, giving them the opportunity to experience the full design process.
“It is a great way for the apprentices to test their skills in a safe environment,” he says. “There is also the element of competition with other companies, it is a fun event, and the skills that they learn across the board are so valuable.
“It is not just about the engineering, which is obviously important. It is also about developing project management skills, how they budget their time and thinking about things like building prototypes and marketing. We want to help them build a well-rounded skill set.”
The Apprentice Automation Challenge 2020 registration opens in December 2019.
The competition is free to enter, the winner will be crowned at the final event in July 2020 and awarded £2000 prize money.
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