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Bicycle design program rethinks manufacturing education

Minnesota college to teach advanced engineering, fabrication through bike production while helping bridge skills gap

Since its earliest inception in the early 19th century, the bicycle has long been a symbol of progress, helping to advance transportation, technology, health, environmentalism, and even human rights movements throughout its more than 200-year history.

Now in 2019, the bicycle will do its part in helping the manufacturing industry progress through a mounting skills gap. That’s the hope of Minnesota State College Southeast anyway.

This fall MSC Southeast will launch its one-of-a-kind Bicycle Design & Fabrication program on its Red Wing campus, offering students a chance to learn advanced manufacturing and engineering skills while earning 60 credits toward a two-year Associate of Applied Science (AAS) degree. Early enrollees to the program began fulfilling general education courses this spring semester.

The program, which is also the first of its kind worldwide, is the brainchild of Travis Thul, dean of trade and technology at MSC Southeast. And to Thul, the bicycle can be a much-needed step to help bridge the ever-growing gap between manufacturer employment needs and the lacking skills in today’s workforce.

“When you look at the modern bicycle, it’s this convergence of engineering and manufacturing competencies,” said Thul. “And it’s all rolled into an application that just about every human being is intimately familiar with on a mechanical level. We all know that if you push on that pedal, you’re going to drive a chain that’s going to move your tire and propel you forward.”

The Bicycle Design & Fabrication program will comprise hands-on lab courses that teach a combination of traditional and advanced manufacturing methods, including welding and machining, metallurgy, working with composites, mechanical design, CAD drafting, rapid prototyping, statics, dynamics, thermodynamics, and 3D printing.

But even with all the multifaceted mechanical and engineering components needed to produce a bicycle, it’s quite possibly the most relatable of any complex machine.

“So much of the knowledge needed for machining and mechanical design can be learned by building a bicycle,” Thul said. “It’s an application that everybody can empathize with, understand, and feel a connection with.”

Manufacturing for Gen Z

One connection MSC Southeast and Thul are hoping to make is with the Holy Grail of demographics: Generation Z, a group of 61 million born after 1996 that is estimated to take over millennials as the most populous generation in 2019.

Besides the obvious reason that millions of the newest generation are currently in or approaching the higher-education stage, there’s also the glaring fact of the massive estrangement between Gen Zers and the manufacturing industry.

bicycle-design-and-fabrication MSC-Southeast bike-frame

Minnesota State College Southeast’s Bicycle Design & Fabrication program will teach students, among other manufacturing means, how to use metal fabrication and welding methods to create a bike frame. Photo provided by Travis Thul.

And with recent U.S. Census Bureau data indicating that 20 percent of Gen Zers will enter the workforce within the next two years, the waning interest is a concerning trend for manufacturing, including the metalworking sectors. Many studies show how more than 2 million manufacturing jobs will go unfilled by 2025 as baby boomers continue to retire across the industry.

The same is true in the U.K. A 2018 survey by Barclays Corporate Banking shows that only 6 percent of British Gen Zers are considering a career in manufacturing. Companies and industry leaders in the U.S. and U.K. alike are clamoring to engage with the generation. Through partnerships with trade and technical schools, manufacturers and fabricators are touting career training programs with advanced technology with automation, robotics, and 3D printing.

But training—on both the trade/technical school level and the continued career development level—still needs improvement to overcome the mounting skills gap, said Jeannine Kunz, vice president of Tooling U-SME, which released a 2018 study looking at training practices within the U.S. manufacturing workforce.

“Around only one-third of manufacturers budget for training,” said Kunz. “You kind of start to get the sense that it’s still not a top priority. Companies seem to recognize the importance, yet they’re not completely acting on it. I’ve called it ‘the execution gap.’ Meaning, we’re not doing enough about it. And so we’ve got a skills gap, but we also have an execution gap.”

Regardless of what you want to call the workforce disparity facing manufacturing—skills gap, perception gap, awareness gap, execution gap—Thul knew there needed to be a different approach to help solve the problem. So, with MSC Southeast’s unique Bicycle Design & Fabrication program, Thul is out to prove to Gen Zers why a career in manufacturing is a good fit. And instead of flaunting advanced manufacturing buzzwords or generalized industry jargon, he altered the perception with specificity.

“I can go into a high school and I say, ‘Who wants to learn how to machine some threads on a pipe?’ That’s a real hard pitch to make to a 16-year-old,” Thul said. “But if I say, ‘Who wants to learn how to precision-machine the interface between the handlebars and the bike frame?’ That’s a very different pitch, but it’s the exact same competencies.”

The approach has worked. When the college announced the program in fall 2018, there was immediate interest. As of February, MSC Southeast’s Bicycle Design & Fabrication program is nearly 50 percent full and has drawn in enrollees from as far as Singapore and Colombia. Thul even expects there to be a wait list due to the tremendous enrollment pace.

“As a metric, programs don’t typically fill up until a week or so before the semester starts,” Thul said. “So being in this position is quite amazing.”

Upper Mississippi River Manufacturing

MSC Southeast has carved out a reputation as an institution that thinks, even teaches, outside the box. In recent years the technical college also created a Guitar Repair & Building program, one of just a few in the nation, that has become widely popular and renowned within the music industry.

But Thul saw a need for MSC Southeast to better serve the region’s diverse manufacturing base.

bicycle-design-and-fabrication MSC-Southeast Travis-Thul

The Bicycle Design & Fabrication program was the brainchild of Travis Thul, dean of trade and technology at Minnesota State College Southeast.

“We have people from around the planet that enroll in [the guitar program] not because there’s a huge unmet need for guitars, but because there’s an emotional appeal to that technical skill set,” Thul said. “I think the bicycle can do the same as the guitar, but also meet many of the advanced manufacturing needs of our local community.”

Located on the banks of the Mississippi River less than 60 miles south of the Twin Cities, the college is smack-dab in the middle of the Upper Midwest—Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa. “The upper Mississippi River region is one of the densest manufacturing and engineering regions of the country,” Thul said.

Besides the bevy of manufacturing companies in Chicago and Milwaukee, the immediate area surrounding the college boasts several notable companies, such as Red Wing Shoes, 3M, Gemini Manufacturing, Valley Craft Metal Fabrication, Fastenal, and additive manufacturing (AM) company Protolabs.

But the Upper Midwest is also home to a significant number of the country’s major bicycle and part component manufacturers: Park Tool in St. Paul; Trek in Waterloo, Wis.; Quality Bicycle Products (QBP) in Bloomington, Minn.; Hed Cycling in Roseville, Minn.; Wyatt Bicycles in La Crosse, Wis.; and Gunnar Cycles in Waterford, Wis.

And much like the rest of the manufacturing industry, the bicycle-making trade shares the common problem of finding enough workers for positions like engineering technicians, quality control technicians, and production technicians.

“The bicycling folks absolutely need skilled personnel,” Thul said. “The demand for people is very, very high and the amount of incoming skilled workers is relatively low. I was up at Park Tool and they made it very clear that they need people across all these different competencies. But, simultaneously, if I go over to 3M, they’ll say the exact same thing.”

Through the Bicycle Design & Fabrication program, Thul believes he can create an employment pipeline to fulfill skilled job requirements that go beyond just bicycle manufacturing.

The first year will focus on learning applied fabrication skills such as machining; welding; prototyping; as well as taking a class called “The History of the Bicycle,” which will study how the bike has evolved since the early 19th century and how it has democratized transportation.

In the second year, students study technical engineering, learning how springs, belts, gears, drivetrains, ball bearings, and power transmissions work, as well as studying thermodynamics, physics, and aerodynamic drag.

“These students will never leave class asking, ‘When am I ever going to use this?’” Thul said. “They are going to come into class and ask, ‘How can I take this and make it a better product?’ They can immediately take a hypothetical or generic application and turn it into reality.”

bicycle-design-and-fabrication MSC-Southeast

As of February, MSC Southeast’s Bicycle Design & Fabrication program is nearly 50 percent full and has drawn in enrollees from as far as Singapore and Colombia.

The program will culminate with students taking on a capstone project. But that isn’t limited to just building a bicycle for themselves. Thul said students will also have the option to engineer and manufacture a bicycle to serve people with disabilities or even a bicycle component or accessory, such as a helmet or a shoe.

“We have Red Wing Shoes right here in town,” Thul said. “What if [a student] partnered with them to build lightweight, custom bike shoes for low drag? There are a lot of synergies available, not just for the bicycle itself.”

When a student knows when they’re going to apply something they studied, that changes the perspective on education and focus in the classroom and, ultimately, the attitude about getting into a manufacturing career—all thanks to the bicycle.

“If I can produce somebody that can understand rapid prototyping, 3D modeling, metal fabrication, welding, and some design,” Thul said, “that’s a very marketable employee, whether they’re building bicycles or something else.”