The race for new experts

Fascination with product use helps create tomorrow's fluid power sales people

By -- Industrial Distribution, 2/1/2001

A program designed to create students' interest in the fluid power industry has been underway since 1999. Two fluid power distributors began supplying parts and expertise to teams competing in a national robotics competition, and the success of the program has mushroomed.

In high schools across the country last month, "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology," or FIRST, had many students working at a fever pitch. FIRST's main objective is to get high school students excited about design and power engineering, and the industrial applications and research inherent in the building of robots. The association, born in 1989, has sponsored robot competitions since 1992.

Fred Hord, owner of HPE Automation in Deerfield Beach, Fla., supplies parts for several teams. According to Hord, major corporations, federal agencies and distributors have sponsored teams of students.

High school teams organize, then design, build, and operate sophisticated electro-mechanical robots in games that have become very serious, for students and teachers alike. Yet, that is only the beginning of the story.

Hord's company specializes in fluid power products, particularly pneumatics, and part of his interest in the competition is growing students' interest in the engineering of power design, getting them interested in becoming the experts and engineers of the future.

"Companies sponsor one or more teams, and supply parts-we'll send 525 kits of pneumatic parts to teams this year-and expertise," Hord says. " But imagine if distributors of all kinds of products offered the same kind of relationship. These robots use a lot of nuts, bolts electrical components and motors. If other associations gave parts and products in exchange for future engineers and experts, we could solve one of the nation's great [technology] problems-not enough engineers."

Mike Joyce of Dynamic Technology, Inc., is also a mentor and supplier for FIRST competitions. "[Fluid power] is a motion control solution. As we look at customers, they have forgotten that fluid power actually exists. They design gear/pulley/electric motor solutions and don't realize there is a simple fluid power solution. We are a very motion-control, demand-driven industry."

John Groot, CEO of The Knotts Co., in Berkeley Heights, N.J., and president of Fluid Power Education Foundation, added that higher education is not offering fluid power programs. "It is part of a stool with three legs-mechanical motion using gears, electrical using motors, and fluid power using hydraulics and pneumatics-and universities leave out the last. In motion control, we are a third, last choice."

Groot is working with key high schools to further promote the use of fluid power products as motion-control devices for robots. "Some of the programs in the high schools rival those of four-year colleges," he says.

According to Hord, the nation's engineering pool has dropped 40 percent. However, the number of students and teams in the robotics competition has grown every year by 40 percent. If only a few of those students become engineers or experts in pneumatics in the future, the trend can be reversed. The same could hold true, he notes, for other goods and services, from abrasives and cutting tool technology, to fasteners and material handling.

Learning about products early helps students become better salespeople and wiser buyers of technical products. The industries that look to grow in sales and applications benefit from FIRST now and in the future, as each class graduates more kids who are fascinated by the process, Hord says. Bringing knowledgeable people into the business of buying and selling pneumatics is one of the best things the industry can do for itself, he notes.

"We are now about 18 ^th in the world in math and science learning in schools. We need our manufacturers to stay and thrive in the U.S.," Hord says, adding that at the 1999 robotics competition, NASA representative Dan Golden addressed students. Golden says that the nation is losing engineers because people have the wrong idea about what engineers do. He says industries need to change ideas about technical mechanics and enable people who want to learn it, and learn to love it.

Fluid power shipments and orders were up significantly for 2000, and programs such as FIRST will continue to promote growth, says Hord. "Our mantra has to be 'From kids to customers," says Joyce. "Customers must be touched seven to ten times, and with education we're going back many times to the same students to make it stick."

-Al Tuttle, Jr., Associate Editor

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