The National Skills Academy for Manufacturing and Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick have agreed a partnership for industry skills development.
The partnership will circulate the knowledge from WMG’s £72 million Premium Automotive Research and Development Programme. This worked with Jaguar Land Rover to help suppliers to premium car manufacturers in the West Midlands develop their skills, products, processes and market understanding to such a level as to be competitive in global markets. Through a focus on skills development, it recently helped to save some £4m in bringing Jaguar’s new XF model to market in a record 29 months.
The Skills Academy says it has spent two years researching and implementing leading edge practices that enable work-based learning to achieve its full potential. This has resulted in a new systems-based approach to learning from the Skills Academy known as the Learning Engine. This new model is designed to link training to business objectives to provide a measurable return – initial results show a 6:1 return on any investment in learning.
Bob Gibbon, managing director of the Skills Academy, said:
“WMG is part of a top university and is an acknowledged world class organisation with almost 30 years of experience of adding value to the manufacturing industry.
WMG’s values match those of the National Skills Academy for Manufacturing which is a centre of innovation and excellence dedicated to raising standards of skills and work-based learning to help enhance UK Manufacturing’s global competitiveness.
“By coming together we can pool expertise, knowledge and best practice in work-based learning that provides measurable business benefits and disseminate it across the sector, the region, and throughout the UK.”
Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, founder and director of WMG, added:
“By working with the Skills Academy we aim to establish a major national agency that shares its collective thinking with the sector, using each other’s networks to disseminate far and wide. This is great news for the West Midlands and manufacturing throughout the UK.”
