The ‘Future of Engineering’ event, which was backed by partners Balluff, Bosch, Cognex, EEF, Festo, Medasil, MPM Composites, Rockwell Automation and Siemens, was held as part of the first Leeds Manufacturing Festival.
Lambert also recently threw open the doors of its Tadcaster factory to showcase life as a modern-day engineer. More than 200 students of all ages came to the firm’s site and were given a taste of bionics, augmented reality, robotics and the virtual cave, thanks to AMRC’s specialist MANTRA exhibition.
Warren Limbert, managing director of Lambert, said: “To deliver the high-quality production equipment we are renown for, we need to continue to attract the best talent and develop our own engineers and application specialists.
“The ‘Future of Engineering’ event is a fantastic way of achieving this by showcasing the Lambert brand in line with the wide array of amazing technologies that will drive manufacturing forward in the future.
“We currently employ eight apprentices and will be looking to recruit a further four over the course of the next twelve months.”
Lambert works with multiple schools across work experience placements, factory tours, open days and apprenticeship/graduate employment, with the latest event taking the number of young people it has engaged with to over 1500 during the last five years.
Lambert’s Madeleine Lee played a key role in shaping the ‘Future of Engineering’ event and said: “We recognise the importance of inspiring young people to consider a future in manufacturing and the best way to do this is to give them a first-hand insight into the sector today and change the misconception that it is a dirty industry. There’s a whole host of career opportunities linked to state-of-the-art technologies, such as virtual reality and 3D printing.
“The event was completely hands-on and attracted pupils as young as seven and those currently studying their degrees. They all had the chance to tour our factory, look at some of the machines we build and ask questions about careers and what they could do in the future.”
She went on to add: “It was important we got our apprentices involved, with our first years helping out with the exhibitions, including the AMRC’s STEM team with their Marty Robots, whilst our more experienced apprentices designed and built a hands-on interactive light game that tested people’s response times.
