The "Brain Drain" Rears its Ugly Head...
Swagelok Bristol supplies many industry sectors across it’s distribution area, ranging from Power, Semi-Conductor and Defence applications to Chemical and Refining. Beyond a historical commitment to supplying the highest quality valves, tube fittings, hoses and much more, Swagelok has an unrivaled view of trends in our industries because we have been manufacturing and supplying since 1947.
Swagelok uses engineers in the field to advise customers on how to utilise our products as efficiently as possible, through provision of innovation and engineering expertise, helping customers fully engage with our product offering.
Swagelok as a supplier is in a unique position to observe the impact of a ‘Brain Drain’ across multiple engineering sectors.
The Effects of the Brain Drain
There is a worrying ‘Brain Drain’ in expertise across many industries in the UK. In engineering there are a lack of engineers entering the field, alongside long-term employees reaching retirement age, and subsequently taking their expertise with them. Swagelok Bristol has conducted research into the Brain Drain in Engineering, to comprehensively understand what issues our customers are facing.
The current general statistics for the Brain Drain within engineering is a shortfall of 20,000 engineers every year. It is widely known that the UK is not training enough people. Specifically IEEE Engineering 360 research reports that 37% of engineers surveyed ‘agree we lose specialised knowledge and senior expertise faster than we are gaining it’. With 32% of engineers reporting that ‘involvement from external partners, vendors or customers has increased’.
What are the Main Issues Faced by our Customers?
From the research Swagelok Bristol understands your issues are primarily around mitigating the risk of the pace of engineering constantly increasing and a pressure to reduce costs. We acknowledge that re-work is a disaster for our customers both in terms of cost and impact on risk. Your feedback supports the need for support in clarification and understanding of the best possible outcome when using Swagelok components.
There is a clear message whether you are an engineer or a designer for critical safety and the mitigation of any risk within high-risk assemblies. Component choice, manufacture method and material requirements are all issues that you have requested clarification for and support, ultimately you believe better knowledge at the planning stage will allow for better productivity and longevity within your production.
Supporting the Customer - Explore, Educate, Share expertise
As the brain drain increases it is critically important that expertise is shared and understood across all industries.
Swagelok Bristol as a supplier understands the need to support and ensure the correct application and best productivity outcome of Swagelok products.
Ensuring the product range is performing as expected and providing real cost and longevity savings for our customers has become an ever increasing priority as knowledge, time and complete understanding of product implementation is proving ever more difficult for our customer base. Swagelok Bristol has the resources to support individual companies and specific problems.
Following a real push from our large industry sectors to facilitate better education, Swagelok Bristol as a supplier and distributor acknowledges the need to facilitate supporting design teams, project managers and engineers.
Further information on how Bristol Swagelok can support you
To ensure greater understanding, production capability and profitability matches your expectations visit our Services page to further understand how we can support your decision making...
