Environmental Scan 2017: Human Capital Issues within the Medical Devices Sector
Technical occupations
Engineers and
Scientists
Technicians
Machine Operators
and Assemblers
Flexibility to move
between assembling
different products
The impact of
emerging/future
trends on talent/skill
requirements
1. Automation
The impact of
emerging/future
trends on talent/skill
requirements
2. Technological
convergence
Increasing demand
for strong
engineering
capabilities in
automation, robotics
and system
integration
People management
skills required will
change as workforce
moves to a higher
level of skill and
education
Significantly more
process design
engineers are needed
to drive effective
automation
The job of validation
engineers,
production engineers
and QA engineers will
become more
intellectually
challenging as
automation makes
processes more
complex
The range of
disciplines that are
core to the medical
devices sector will
expand from
mechanical
engineering,
biomedical
engineering and
materials engineering
to also include
biological sciences,
electronic
engineering and
chemistry.
Increasing need for
talents with a deep
knowledge of their
discipline who can
work in a
multidisciplinary
Increasing need for
technicians with skills
in areas such as
robotics and machine
vision to assist in
developing
automated lines, and
to participate in
managing,
troubleshooting and
improving them
Machine Operators
Increasing
importance of
technical aptitude
Increasing skill
requirements in
some machine
operator jobs
bringing these jobs
to present
technician level
Assemblers
Decreasing demand
for assemblers doing
manual final
assembly
There will be a need
to ease the
integration of
technically skilled
workers from outside
the sector via
upskilling
N/A
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