The PneuDrive Challenge Student Engineering Design Competition, sponsored by SEW-Eurodrive and Festo, recognised the need to bridge the gap between business and student engineering more than four years ago. This competition is now positioned as a learning experience that helps expose engineering students to the analytical, design and problem-solving skills that are required in business.
The fifth year of this student mechatronic engineering competition has been launched at more universities than before with eight road-shows to universities in Gauteng, North West and the Western and Eastern Cape having already being completed. In addition to this, a workshop has been piloted at the University of Johannesburg where students were introduced to the functionality and interface of SEW-Eurodrive’s Workbench and Festo’s xDKI catalogue software by the respective companies. The software is designed to help customers select products, configure and also test the design of complex drive and pneumatic systems. Rene Rose, general manager communications at SEW-Eurodrive says that if South Africa wants to be competitive and relevant in African engineering projects, it needs to have student engineers that are competent and innovative. “This competition is the perfect platform to initiate learning that brings academic theory and business reality closer together and we are proud to be initiators and sponsors of such an important learning innovation.”
Russell Schwulst, business development manager Festo comments: “Despite the fact that for more than a decade business has been calling for higher academic standards and for graduates with relevant skills, we still face the challenge of being able to recruit young and talented engineers that can get up to speed quickly on a business level. The PneuDrive Challenge model is an excellent opportunity for exposing students to what can, and does, happen in business.”
Design and entrepreneurial skills
By creating a competition that requires proposing, designing and assembling innovative engineering ideas, students are given an opportunity to experience a wide range of problems and project issues that they would typically need to solve in the real world. This year’s competition theme, ‘Engineering a Better Life for Communities in South Africa’, highlights that the sponsors not only recognise the importance of business in partnering with higher education institutions, but that they also believe that the competition needs to become more relevant to a wider audience. The fact that successful entrants are required to combine analytical and engineering design skills to propose solutions that are economically viable, energy efficient and relevant to broader South African communities, means that students will need to ‘put on more than just an academic hat’.
This competition, which requires an interdisciplinary approach, effective team work and sound engineering knowledge, has set a bench-mark in the partnerships that should exist between business and the academic world.
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