Nexnet

The Champion for the Diploma in MPD, and man behind entrepreneurial support company C2M, visited the centre to talk to Diploma students from Sunderland about innovation, invention, intellectual property, entrepreneurship and patents.

 

Gary has welcomed the Diploma in MPD as a positive move for the sector, which will produce youngsters with skills suited to employers’ needs. He said: “Students leaving school aren’t well prepared for the real world. That’s no reflection on the standards of teaching, but teachers haven’t had the right material. The Diploma in MPD has allowed them to present a course that is tailored to the employer’s point of view.”

 

Gary began his career as a toolmaker, before working for blue-chip companies such as Airbus, JCB and McDonald Douglas. He founded C2M, or ‘Concept to Manufacture’, in 2004, which specialises in turning clients’ ideas into novel and imaginative products. The company has helped approximately 180 other firms take their ideas through to manufacture and stipulates that its clients’ products must be made in the UK.

 

The introduction of the Diploma for MPD is a welcome step for youngsters, Gary said, which will tailor their skills to develop their personal goals and ambitions. He said: “I came from a pit village in County Durham. My family were in the mines and my brothers became engineers. Kids were taught in a much stricter manner back then, but there wasn’t the understanding of what the kids wanted to do as there is now with this Diploma.”

 

Gary visits two or three schools a month to keep in touch with how youngsters are doing with the Diploma in MPD. He said: “Unless you get into schools, you won’t understand what they need. The Chief Executive who just turns up at a launch party to say how well his team has done doesn’t wash with me.”

 

He took the opportunity at the event at the Pallion Centre to talk to students about Intellectual Property and its role in product development. “I know several companies that have had their fingers burned, where six months down the line they found out that someone else had a similar idea to their own.”

 

The Pallion Centre draws from 17 schools in Sunderland to provide 14 to 19 year olds with a learning centre for the Diploma in MPD. David Holyoak is Technology Development Manager at Monkwearmouth School and seconded to Sunderland Futures as Head of Department for the Diploma in MPD, and welcomed Gary’s visit to the Pallion Centre. He said: “We are trying to bring learning to life and making the Diploma in MPD real for the students. The Diploma is different because of employer engagement. The students on this course are excellent prospects and employers and higher education institutions should be falling over each other to have them. They are a joy to teach.”

 

 

 

Issued on behalf of the Manufacturing Diploma Development Partnership, by Nexnet PR, Leeds, www.nexnet.co.uk.  For further information call Nexnet on 0113 247 0029 or email paul.newham@nexnet.co.uk.