Good afternoon. Thank you very much. Thank you, Martin, for your great recommendations. I approve of them too.
Thank you for inviting me to discuss the critical role played by Canadian leading polytechnic institutions in shaping the future of advanced manufacturing. It is my pleasure to be here as the voice of those institutions.
I have many roles in both industry and academia that are relevant to your study. Among them, I am a fellow of Engineers Canada and I also serve as the chair of additive manufacturing in the American Society of Mechanical Engineering. I am associate dean and professor of engineering technology at Sheridan College and director of Sheridan's Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Design Technologies, or CAMDT.
CAMDT, our centre located in Brampton, Ontario, is an exemplar of Sheridan's growing role as a hub for industry, students, and faculty expertise, offering small and medium-sized businesses a technology playground to help them develop and adopt new technology alongside Sheridan researchers.
The new technology that Martin mentioned is additive manufacturing. CAMDT is turning Brampton into a huburb, a vibrant place where experts come together, ideas collide, and innovation flourishes.
CAMDT provides applied research, consulting, and skills training to local manufacturing in the critical areas of additive manufacturing, robotics, integrated energy systems, and mechatronics systems.
Sheridan, government, and local industry have collaborated for nearly a decade to position the centre to address critical skills gaps in the manufacturing sector. The centre helps produce highly qualified, skilled graduates who are able to work capably with the type of advanced technology Martin mentioned being used by manufacturers to increase productivity. CAMDT is very respected in the community, and its external partners include ABB, Siemens, Festo, and Hatch.
Industry collaboration is important to the college's ability to sustain excellence in both education and research. Our entire philosophy is rooted in the movement called CDIO—conceive, design, implement, and operate—that aims to reinvent the way that engineering is taught and practised.
CDIO has been adopted at 100 institutions worldwide, including Stanford and MIT, where it began. CDIO is rich in project-based and hands-on learning. It produces engineers who don't just study first principles in textbooks, but who are actually ready to engineer when they graduate. Like you, we recognize that today's knowledge economy requires engineering graduates who are critical thinkers and creative problem-solvers.
What truly sparks innovation and excitement in the students is the practical application of fundamental principles in the form of experimentation and hands-on experience. This is what polytechnics do best.
Today's subject is of vital concern to Sheridan, which is one of the 11 members of Polytechnics Canada. Polytechnics like Sheridan function as the R and D arm for small and medium-sized companies that cannot afford the cutting-edge equipment that's found in our workshops, studios, and labs, and who don't have in-house personnel to apply for the grants and wait for approvals and decisions. We remove these barriers and risks for the SMEs while speeding up innovation. SMEs and polytechnics need to be part of the government's thinking about advanced manufacturing, innovation clusters, networks, and incubators.
We tackle problems brought forward by industry while giving students sound experience and a skill set that cannot be taught in a traditional university classroom. As a result, we produce graduates who will make immediate and positive contributions to the workforce when they leave our institution. It is critically important that we mentor students in the process because talent—the talent that Martin mentioned—is the key input. It is people who innovate and firms that later commercialize.
A company we have helped through our robotics centre, as an example, is Hatch, an engineering company. Hatch worked with our faculty and students to design, test, and build a solution for the customer. We delivered a working prototype in six months, something that Hatch estimated would have taken twice as long to do on their own and that would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the end, all they had to purchase was a nail gun to put on the end of our robot's arm.
Our success also led to a renewed partnership with Siemens Canada, resulting in access to $22 million worth of software licences so that our students can train on the industry-leading digital manufacturing software used in the automotive, aerospace, machinery, medical devices, and shipbuilding sectors.
Through a long-term partnership with our industry partner, Cimetrix Solutions, CAMDT secured a foundational set of additive manufacturing equipment that enabled the establishment of its new Product Innovation Centre. The centre is the crucial link between large, leading corporations, including ABB and Cimetrix, and the local and regional SMEs that can use the facilities to integrate innovative technologies into their own businesses through collaboration with the Sheridan faculty and student researchers. This approach addresses industry challenges, and most importantly, it provides work-ready graduates whose skills contribute to both immediate and sustainable innovative growth.
And we're just one polytechnic institution. Places like Sheridan, Humber, and Conestoga have earned exceptionally strong track records in preparing tomorrow's knowledge workers and partnering with industry to help Canada become more globally competitive.
By uniting businesses, governments, and post-secondary institutions in this demand-driven way, we will bolster Canada's global competitiveness in advanced manufacturing. This is the model that is needed for the times.
In this new economic reality where we must value innovation and creativity more than ever before, Sheridan and polytechnics across Canada are willing and able to meet the challenge that this government has identified as crucial to ensuring Canada's place as a leader in the rapidly changing global manufacturing economy.
Thank you very much.