With the opening of its new southern technical centre in Swindon, during August, Hexagon Metrology simultaneously announced its intention to help drive up the measurement skills of those in UK manufacturing.
The measurement specialist is to deliver UKAS-accredited NPL-developed training materials, along with a network of other accredited deliverers. The NPL’s training sales manager, Dr Emma Mulligan, explained how the course material had come about. “There has been feedback from industry over the last 18 months to two years about the decline in measurement skills. There has been a decline in apprenticeships and people are not being taught measurement from first principles anymore. Sophisticated equipment in industry eliminates the thinking; you push a button and you get an answer, so we have lost the questioning culture in terms of measurement. We recognise this, industry recognises it and so do the measurement equipment OEMs, who have been working quite hard to fix the problem themselves.”
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