AME is itself a partnership between Coventry University and Unipart, and Perrin moved from a management position at Rolls Royce to head it up. He told Works Management he sees “pockets of good practice” in the UK’s collaboration between business and education organisations, but there is always more that can be done.
“Every successful partnership takes a lot of work, there’s no one size fits all solution,” he said. “At AME we concentrate on three streams: skills and education, research and then commercialising that research. Businesses tend to have very short-term focus, and working with universities can help them to think in terms of long-term strategy.”
AME has recently been shortlisted for The Guardian University Award for the development of a 1,700 square metre manufacturing hub in Coventry, where 60 trainee engineers are currently working. Seven projects are approaching completion in automotive, aerospace and rail.
Perrin said the trainee engineers approach their studying “just like work” and that this will give them an edge when they finish their courses. He sees this as part of a commercial mind-set that universities must adopt when partnering with manufacturing and engineering firms.
“When universities work with businesses they have to treat it like business themselves,” he said. “To keep the partnership fresh requires the creation of a lot of good processes to keep the model moving forward.”
He added: “I’m a big advocate of people going to the other side on secondment to get a feel of how it works. That’s something that’s done a lot in places like Germany, but isn’t currently as common here.”
