No abstract
The background of this study is a well-established 21 st century trend, leading education institutions towards diversifying their offer with e-learning. While top engineering institutions worldwide have developed e-learning, many others were still focusing on limited traditional offers until the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 which has brought unprecedented upheaval and drastic change even for small local colleges. The aim of this study is to analyse the dimensions of this change and evaluate the change management processes across engineering departments in local UK colleges that have had to shift their teaching, learning and assessment from face-to-face delivery to an e-environment in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and are considering moving onto elearning wherever possible. The initial research for this study has been collected across 77 further education colleges in the North West of the UK that also have a higher education offer and that teach engineering at various levels. Key aspects of the move to e-learning as well as the wider context will be presented, followed by a contextualised literature review where examples of challenges from analysed institutions will be presented in relation to key concepts of change management. Some critical aspects of higher education across colleges are considered along with their challenges in the present COVID-19 context. This will be followed by recommendations. The basis for the recommendations is an extended market and change management analysis available in the appendices to this work. SWOT, Porter's Five Forces as well as stakeholder analyses are complemented by Culture Web and McKinsey's 7S models which have been used to analyse the current state of operations and present strategic positioning of UK colleges with an engineering further and higher education provision in order to identify which of these may need reinforcement and propose recommendations.
The focus of this paper is the 5S process, incorporating a real working example of how this method can positively affect a business in terms of managing change and continuous improvement. The benefits that 5S implementation can bring to a manufacturing business focus on every-day work with a holistic approach that intends to bring order both in the material environment and in the ethical values that support it. There are many factors that should be addressed when introducing 5S into a company, including some less tangible ones like moral and ethical principles, environmental factors, sustainability, and risk management. The backgrounds of the project featured in this work is in the field of nuclear waste management. The development of 5S practices are significant to this field because the methodology is known to increase safety and improve overall performance. However, it is also important to analyse what other aspects 5S could impact in an engineering company in this business.This work will therefore investigate the wider aspects of engineering management practice before delving into more specific questions on manufacturing process improvement with a particular focus on the impact 5S will have on workshop organisation and changing operator and technician culture. This will include a discussion of an industry relevant project and how 5S has impacted it. The project in question is entitled Soffit Plate Project and is a batch production project where a quantity of 282 Soffit plates are assembled with over 100 components in each plate. In total there are thousands of components that need to be managed throughout the contract with added paperwork and manufacturing process management as required. The work evidences that a normal approach would not be sufficient or sustainable for profitability and that 5S should be implemented from the beginning. The discussion focuses on the implementation of 5S and its effect on engineering business management.
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