The level of knowledge required in various manufacturing engineering competency areas in the state of Oregon

Graduation date: 1981This study was conducted to determine the level of knowledge required\ud by graduating manufacturing engineering students in various\ud manufacturing engineering competency areas as perceived by managers\ud of manufacturing from 17 major manufacturing industrial classifications\ud in the state of Oregon.\ud Methods and Procedures\ud A preliminary listing of competency areas was developed by reviewing\ud literature in manufacturing, engineering, management and education.\ud This preliminary listing was presented to a jury 'of experts who validated\ud its content and suggested revisions. The final listing was then\ud developed into a questionnaire which was field tested with managers\ud of manufacturing. This final questionnaire contained 56 manufacturing\ud engineering competencies with a five-point Likert-type scale consisting\ud of not necessary, minimal, general, substantial and advanced as\ud response selections to determine the level of knowledge required. A\ud selected sample of 158 manufacturing managers responded to the questionnaire.\ud The results were statistically analyzed with the one-way\ud analysis of variance and the Student-Newman-Keuls test.\ud Findings and Conclusions\ud The compency area mean scores ranged from 3.8153 to 1.8089 with\ud 21 competency areas requiring substantial knowledge, 28 requiring\ud general knowledge, and 7 requiring a minimal knowledge level. The\ud competency area requiring the highest level of knowledge was the area\ud of energy conservation while the area of fine arts was perceived as\ud requiring the lowest level of knowledge. Significant differences were\ud found in 18 of the 59 competency areas included in the study. Of the\ud ten significantly different competency areas which could be specifically\ud identified, there were seven cases where the significantly different\ud group was the Apparel and Other Finished Product classification.\ud Recommendations\ud Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that 49\ud of the 56 competency areas in the study be included in the manufacturing\ud engineering curriculum and that the remaining 7 competency areas\ud should not be emphasized in curriculum planning