Page 9 - Annual Report 2014-2015

STATEMENT 9
important that the engineers of the future have the very best preparation – all over Europe. It must be our role in FEANI to provide the engineers of tomorrow and the young experts of today with the opportunity to gain and enhance experience that will be so important for their profession in the future. They should be able to learn how to best apply ideas and to form an opinion as well as how to share ideas in practice, to discuss and to search for solutions together.
All of these characteristics will be important in meeting the challenges that they will face in their future as engineers. Because of the digital change, our professional group sees great demands in terms of complexity and exibility, but also big opportunities. The engineers in Europe are already well educated, but they will need additional skills to be able to successfully meet the challenges ahead. For example, not only must engineers have specialized and deep expertise, they must also more and more possess inter- disciplinary skills. Because of the merging of production technology, automation technology and IT-software, more and more tasks will have to be mastered in a eld that is de ned very widely and exibly from a technological, organizational and social standpoint. The classic engineer who was strictly the technical expert will now have to offer a broader pro le and market him or herself more widely. Engineers will be working in more loosely de ned job pro les instead of clearly de ned specialty areas. They will be working primarily at interfaces rather than in tradi- tional functional areas. In many cases they will be working in inter- and multidisciplinary teams and settings.
FEANI is already offering future engineers a solid preparation for those challenges. At the general meeting in Lisbon, young engineers got to experience for the rst time their own event, which, as we were thrilled to see, was attended by a large number of participants from our various member associations from all over Europe. They had a chance to exchange ideas in a professional context on topics such as digitalization, new materials or energy. Naturally this also included a fair amount of diverse experiences, views, opinions and solution proposals, but that is precisely why such a meeting is so exciting and constructive. This is where we should de nitely pick up the ball and provide our future engineers with oppor- tunities to get actively involved and to participate in beyond the boundaries of their own country.
Another great success and good example was the European Young Engineers (EYE) Conference, which was organized by VDI this year and took place in Hannover alongside the annual Hannover Fair. The topic was "Digital Transformation" and offered a diverse program to the nearly 70 participants from 12 European countries. Seeing the young engineers from entirely different backgrounds discussing technical matters, organizing things on their own and working out new perspec- tives and ideas, was great to watch and left me with a very positive impression about the future. I am sure our future engineers will master the challenges to come, if we continue to support and prepare them in the right way.
I am looking forward to our future cooperation within FEANI and I feel certain that we are on the right track together. 