Technological progress in aerospace is creating attractive jobs, but also increasing the need for upskilling, said panellists in a 3 Sep roundtable organised by The Business Times and presented by aircraft engine manufacturer and system provider GE Aerospace.

Singapore’s aerospace industry has seen strong employment growth, with nearly 3,000 jobs created between 2021 and 2023, and some 2,500 more expected in the next three to five years.

The industry is a leading adopter of technologies, said Economic Development Board (EDB) vice president of mobility and industrial solutions Zheng Jingxin.

In maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), this could mean 3D printing for repairs or artificial intelligence-driven predictive maintenance, for example.

Such new technologies not only help companies become more competitive, but “create jobs that Singaporeans will want to take up”, he said at the roundtable, themed “Advancing MRO for a Resilient Aerospace Industry in Asia-Pacific”.

These include jobs in “repair development”, such as writing repair manuals. Jobs are also emerging in next-generation battery technologies, as electric and hybrid aircraft are being developed.
 

But workers must be prepared for such jobs. This has two aspects, said Zheng: upskilling existing workers, and preparing graduates for the workforce.

The government works with companies that make new investments, such as GE Aerospace and ST Engineering, to “train in advance and train in excess, so they have a wider pool of workers that are operationally capable of undertaking new MRO work that comes from the new generation platforms”, he said.

For mid-career workers, there are also Workforce Singapore’s Career Conversion Programmes, which help to fund job redesign and reskilling.

Through these programmes, GE Aerospace works with tripartite partners to “understand what the future needs are” in the industry, said Iain Rodger, managing director of component repair in Singapore.

GE Aerospace also has its own talent development efforts, he added. “We’re continually working with our engineering talents, training them on current as well as future techniques and technologies.”

Meanwhile, ST Engineering collaborates with the labour movement to help workers adapt to digital and automated work, said executive vice-president and head of aerospace MRO Yip Hin Meng.
 

Preparing graduates

Besides upskilling the existing pool of workers, institutes of higher learning must develop a curriculum that prepares new graduates for the sector, said Yip.

ST Engineering itself is partnering academic institutions in the US and China to build a pipeline of new workers, he added.

Noting that Singapore has an upcoming graduate traineeship scheme, Rodger suggested: “We possibly could go one step further and look at graduate apprenticeships.”

These are very popular and successful in Europe and Australia, and GE Aerospace in North America has started to develop these too, he said.

Participating graduates “have more of a focus on what the industry actually requires”, he added. “So you’re moving away from some of the academia on aerospace and more towards advanced manufacturing.”

While Singapore’s industry has a tradition of workers with aerospace or aeronautical degrees, having talent in advanced manufacturing is important too, as this is where the aerospace industry “is coalescing now and into the future”.

“I think we need to spend equally, if not more, time developing the people than… actually developing the technology.”
 

Source: The Business Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.