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66 SMT Magazine • February 2016 to take a lot of this non-value-added stuff and take some of these things that are done now in an indirect way and have the people that are direct labor do them. Your direct labor is going to be more in terms of hourly rate, but there's going to be so much less of it. The peo- ple on the floor are going to be multi-functional engineers. Goldman: As opposed to operators, which has ad- vantages. Borkes: The advantage is that you're not going to have all this other stuff that needs to be ab- sorbed into that direct labor. It's basically the restructuring of the organization, from many departments, where people are grouped with common skills, to small, self-managed, multi- skilled project teams. Goldman: Where are you in the process of getting students into your program? Borkes: That's a good question. When the time is right, the students will be judiciously selected from high school graduates. The first class will be 40 students. After four years we estimate the student body size will be consistently about 120 students. As I said in the beginning, this is a very ambitious project. We're talking with an organization that accredits engineering colleges on the East Coast. The program will result in a four-year Bachelor of Science program in De- sign and Manufacturing Sciences. I tell you the biggest problem is finding pro- fessors and staff. One of the things that's key to the success of students using a business as their classroom is having professors at the school leading the projects on the EMS floor. We're looking for staff that has the real world experi- ence, but also the teaching abilities. We're look- ing for six people that will be part of the leader- ship group on the manufacturing floor, but who can teach in the classroom, as well. Goldman: You first need people to teach basic things like engineering for accreditation. Borkes: That's correct. Right now we're writing three supplemental text books which takes, for example, the traditional calculus curriculum that's typically taught in that ivory tower and applies it to the high-tech product assembly done at the Jefferson Electronic Manufacturing (JEM) Center—applying the theory to motion control of a pick-and-place machine, for exam- ple. Goldman: Yes, which is normally taught in univer- sity as all theory. Borkes: And they never use it again in their lives, but I'm taking aspects of that and apply- ing it to the manufacturing floor, as I am also doing with chemistry. An awful lot of chemistry goes on in what we do in the real world. What I want to do is relate the chemistry, the theory that they're typically taught, to the chemistry that's used on the manufacturing floor—as well as physics, economics, etc. It's non-traditional, that's for sure. Goldman: But you can't start until you're accred- ited. Borkes: I don't know when we're going to start. That whole accreditation thing is a massive sub- project on its own, especially considering this isn't a traditional college. We're looking for the first freshman class to start as soon as possible. We want to do it right, but it is hiring staff, put- ting the manufacturing and school facility to- gether, working with industry, etc., which are presenting challenges. All those things make it a very multi-faceted, non-traditional project with lots of variables. One possibility is linking up with an existing school with accreditation. " the people on the floor are going to be multi-functional engineers. " tHe JeFFersoN ProJect, Part 2