Why Do We Need to Upskill Within the Battery Industry?
Hear Jonathon Williamson, Head of Learning & Development at the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) discuss the lessons they’ve learnt in setting up battery research lines.
During our interview, Jonty chats openly about the skills challenge within the battery workforce. He also talks about why upskilling is so important, the training opportunities and facilities currently available, the barriers associated with purchasing training equipment and how third party suppliers such as PI-KEM can help.
Learn more about UKBIC: https://www.ukbic.co.uk/
Full video interview transcription:
Would you like to introduce yourself?
Jonty 00:19 – I’m Jonty Williamson, I’m the Head of Learning and Development here at the UKBIC and it’s my role to ensure that not only are UKBIC staff upskilled to required levels, but also to support the UK’s growing industry in battery manufacturing, to ensure that we have a skilled work force for the future.
So why is upskilling so important?
Jonty 00:42 – To me, upskilling is probably the most paramount thing in battery manufacturing. As we know the UK invented (inverted commas) the lithium-ion cell, we sent it out to the world and as so it became such a powerhouse and we did the British thing of giving it away, we didn’t really invest in the skills required to manufacture and that is unfortunately to our discredit at the moment. The basic thing for me is, if there’s no skills, there’s no workers, if there’s no workers, there’s no product. We are always a leading mind the UK, in actually developing things – not very good at manufacturing them unfortunately. We’ve got a very important manufacturing industry, one of the largest in the world – so for me to upskill our individuals to ensure that work either comes to or stays in the UK is absolutely paramount to the UK economy. The amount that we have from income in terms of GBP for our automotive manufacturing for me that has to be replicated or even grown upon with battery manufacturing. Without those skills were not going to have the workers to undertake the work, which means no one’s going to want to invest in the UK.
So what training opportunities are there currently for this upskilling?
Jonty 01:57 – The current upskilling, we recently signed off on the Battery manufacturing apprenticeship – designed by UKBIC and other partners including WMG, Alexander Batteries and a few others that were invested in the space to ensure that we have our upskilling – so that is live, I think there are only two places that are doing it at the moment. Somewhere up north supporting ASC and somewhere down south to support Agritas probably Bridgewater and Taunton College down there. However, we have just got the green light on the West Midlands Investment Zone, just behind us here at UKBIC that is earmarked for a battery manufacturing site. So hopefully we’ll have some colleges delivering that supported by UKBIC in the future to support with the apprenticeship route through.
We understand that apprenticeships is only Britain/England rather than the UK. So we are working on the national occupational standard to support Ireland, Wales and Scotland to be able to deliver the same content at a recognised qualification the ESN (Exhibition Skills Network) of which UKBIC is a founding member along with WMG, Enginuity and Coventry University is aligned for all electrification skills to provide a pathway, a career development for anyone wishing to work in electrification which obviously includes battery manufacturing. From a personal point here at UKBIC, we have an introductory course that is an introduction to battery manufacturing that is designed to give anyone from total newbies to people who know what they are doing, a full guided tour and education around the processes currently being undertaken to create a battery, whether that be small scale or at a large manufacturing scale, so again it’s designed for anyone wishing to work in the industry, those who already work in the industry that want to improve their knowledge – more holistic knowledge, investors – people who are looking to sell into the industry, people looking at added industry or adjacent industries, feeding into or out of it. So, it’s designed as a wonderfully holistic course to give anyone the required information they want for battery manufacturing. We are also going to be launching soon the introduction to BMS – Battery Manufacturing Systems – it’s something we’ve seen that a lot of places do and want to understand why it’s being done but don’t really understand what a Battery Manufacturing System does for a vehicle. Important note that obviously UKBIC and any battery manufacturers are going to be industry agnostic, so automotive is our focus because we are in the West Midlands and it is a large part of British manufacturing, there’s nothing stopping us from working with anyone from any other industry, whether it be rail, maritime, space, anything we fancy there.
We’re also looking at launching a hazardous voltage level one and level two, with cells becoming more out there and with a lot of misinformation spread about how dangerous cells are, we are working on this introductory course level one about the awareness of what happens to a cell when it’s put inside a module in a pack and how to deal with high voltage, normal basic things to make sure people are safe around it. Level two is looking at then working with them – a lot of people obviously – especially MOT garages that are now starting to take MOT work for vehicles that they haven’t been properly trained on (inverted commas) the IMI has some great courses on there, but we’re sort of focusing on the battery manufacturing side of how do you properly handle and act around hazardous voltage cells.
What facilities are currently available for training?
Jonty 05:40 – So, there are three main projects as it were around the UK currently looking at this all sponsored by or funded by the Faraday Institution. Obviously at UKBIC, we’ve got the world’s only open access for companies manufacturing line and the only manufacturing line currently in the UK that has the entire process from electrode through to cell assembly to FA & T and to module and pack. So, we’re here with an industrial scale line, where we can train people line side of what it’s actually like to work inside a gigafactory.
Up in the Northeast, you have got the Project with Newcastle University and New College Durham about a smaller scale to support AESC which is to build up in the Northeast and it gives them a more hands-on training environment but on much smaller equipment understanding the processes that can be scaled up. And then again in the midlands here, we have debuted WM - which I will have to find out what it stands for because I can never remember – but that is all about giving them a holistic environment which is blended with a digital environment, so training people digitally to ensure some skills are developed. But that’s got a longer piece and look at almost all electrification and hands on for taking apart cells and modules and packs as you do at MOT work, so that’s got a larger viewpoint. But UKBIC is the only place where you can get training on battery manufacturing at an industrial scale with the knowledge that we have here.
What barriers have you encountered in terms of purchasing equipment?
Jonty 07:13 – Definitely it’s finding suppliers. Battery manufacturing is a new world, and a large portion of our equipment is not manufactured for battery manufacturing. We’ve taken it from other industries and used it for our own purposes, so finding someone that’s got a one stop shop, where you can turn up and say “I’d like to buy all this equipment and here’s what I’d like to use it for” is something really that most people are looking for.
Knowing the equipment to buy as well, a lot of people –especially investors, their focus is money. Nothing wrong with that, it makes the world go round – but they don’t know what equipment they are looking for. So, a lot of their time is spent finding people that tell them what equipment they are looking for, for them to then go and source it. So, for some third party to come up in essence as PI-KEM do go, “these are what you need to do, these are the processes, here’s the equipment, here’s what the equipment does”, just removes that added barrier as almost that introduction to the value of depth towards moving to industrialisation.
How else can you benefit from using third parties?
Jonty 08:26 – Third parties being the expertise of their materials and equipment, ensuring you’ve got someone you can talk to; you can talk about compatibility. Especially looking at the amounts of PLC’s that are out there, the equipment, again with it not being from one supplier like other industries, having to mix and match equipment but make sure it converses and talks to each other, the safety’s in there, you’ve got LES status being captured – all those sorts of things. So, in essence being able to pass that off to someone who is an expert in that – absolutely fantastic! Looking at those [PI-KEM] equipment flow charts again as we said beforehand, being able to know what equipment comes where, what you need to do, how to feed into it. But a large portion of it is going to be the expertise from someone who knows the equipment, knows what it can and can’t be used for. You’ve got the limitations, you’re not going to buy bits of equipment that aren’t going to be useful for you, so having that conversation with a third party, almost a sense check of “I want to do this, this is what I think, can you confirm”.
Have you got any experiences of things not going so well with buying directly?
Jonty 09:27 – So buying directly, the leading suppliers as we know well – Chinese, South East Asia – Brilliant bunch of people to work with but unfortunately because of the industry standards across the world, it’s very difficult to get a British standard piece of machinery that has been Kite marked etc. not from a company that is used to selling in Britain and we’ve seen that around the world, America and most of Europe is you’re buying equipment that is also not written in your native tongue. So, if any PLC work needs to be done on Chinese PLC, you need to find someone who speaks Chinese.
They don’t always play very well with other bits of PLC - Alan Bradley, Samsung, Mitsubishi – getting them to communicate with each other involves having to link potentially different languages both from a PLC point of view but also from an actual human language point of view is very difficult and also involves a lot of work so purchasing again from one single supplier, that is rooted within the UK or America, that understands our standards will make it a lot easier because it can be directed and you won’t waste the time having to ensure everything can communicate properly.
Is there anything you want to add?
Jonty 10:47– Book on a course!
