SERIOUS GAMES PROFILE

and developers must do more SURGICAL TRAINING than simply deliver prototypes The training of future surgeons presents major challenges to healthcare authorities, especially and products that simply look given the constraints imposed by European directives and reductions in the exposure of surgical impressive. Unfortunately, this trainees to real patients and in-theatre experiences. Given the unprecedented levels of trauma is probably one of the field’s they will face, training military surgeons presents an even bigger challenge. Experiences in biggest weaknesses, with very dangerous operational settings are especially difficult to train realistically using home territory few case studies providing facilities, although exercises using mannequins and volunteer amputees, contribute significantly reliable reports of the real-world to pre-deployment experiences and can help in the psychological desensitisation process when outcomes of well-designed confronted with severe physical trauma. experiments and evaluations. Many specialists in the world of medical training believe that there has never been a more Nevertheless, it is fair to say pressing need to develop effective simulation-based training to fill these gaps, servicing the needs that, while serious games still both of individuals and small teams. have some way to go before Despite many well-funded surgical simulation initiatives, the Virtual Reality arena of the 1990s conclusive statements can failed to deliver a comprehensive suite of training packages for the surgical fraternity. However, as be made as to their training the capabilities of gaming technologies began to gather pace in the early 2000s, the delivery of efficacy (promoting positive toolkits enabling developers to construct real-time simulations of physiological processes (including skills or knowledge transfer the effects of pharmaceuticals on the virtual patient) became more and more evident. and minimising skill fade, for One good example of a simulation package designed to support medical personnel in both example), their appearance on civilian and military trauma contexts is Pulse!!, a ‘Virtual Learning Space’ healthcare initiative sponsored the technology-based training CAROL BURKE FREng by the US Office of Naval Research. Developed by Breakaway Games, Pulse!! provides an interactive, stage in many countries has, in virtual environment in which healthcare professionals can practice clinical skills in order to better the main, met with a surprisingly respond to catastrophic incidents, such as bio-terrorism. Using scenarios as diverse as a realistic positive reception. This is representation of Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington DC to a busy clinic populated with patients despite the fact that the term possibly suffering from anthrax exposure, users interact with virtual patients and with other virtual ‘serious games’ seems to have medical personnel to conduct examinations, order tests and administer medication. The virtual attracted as many opponents patients are modelled to respond in real-time, and in an appropriate physiological manner. as proponents and there exists a good number of sceptics who are still recovering from premature investment in the Most engineers in the automotive business have had costly, unreliable and over- hyped immersive display and sleepless nights during the recent economic hiatus. supercomputing technologies For Carol Burke, the financial shock has presented an of the virtual reality era. opportunity to lay the foundations for a new type of engineering business. She talked to Michael Kenward at BIOGRAPHY Professor Bob Stone is the Unipart Group’s Coventry offices and spoke about the Director of the Human company’s reinvention of a traditional business. Interface Technologies Team at the University of Birmingham (UK) and As managing director of Unipart manufacturing operations but has been Research Director of the Manufacturing, Carol Burke admits that she the driving force behind the creation and Human Factors Integration had a few worrying moments during the rapid growth of a profitable manufacturing Defence Technology recent economic turmoil. After all, much consulting business that supports other Centre, where many of of her business when it started involved organisations transforming themselves. his team’s serious games making car parts and some customers activities originate. A virtual cut their orders by 70% overnight. Carol environments and simulation Burke has come out of the recession, and UNIVERSITY CHALLENGES pioneer of nearly 25 years, his previous upsets in car making, with an Carol Burke originally envisaged a career In addition to high-fidelity models of trauma patients, games-based learning environments such as Pulse!! also virtual reality, human factors enthusiasm for reinventing the growing in a very different engineering industry. support interaction between multiple participants. They allow surgeons, anaesthetists and nursing staff to take and telerobotics research has control of their own ‘avatars’ and to interact with their fellow virtual team members under varying degrees of task roster of businesses that she oversees She went through Liverpool University difficulty and time pressur. Studies of team performance, communication and cohesion can also be conducted received numerous national Carol Burke receives her certificate of Academy Fellowship from HRH The Duke of Edinburgh within the Unipart Group. Indeed, she as a student sponsored by British Steel. © Breakaway Games and international awards. on 8 November 2010 doesn’t just want to reengineer her own “In those days, the way that British Steel

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used to treat sponsored undergraduates Faced with such a setback many young engineers might provided really fantastic training,” she says. Light engineering, heavy engineering, time have accepted any conditions that a potential employer in the drawing office, she saw them all. Burke left university with a first class wanted to impose. Not for Burke… instead: “I joined as degree in mechanical engineering and a production manager at GKN Axles. I immediately put on business. “I thoroughly revelled in the pure engineering and I really enjoyed the the white coat and went out on the shop floor as a 22-year- intellectual side too.” Her ambitions were in manufacturing: “I wanted to enter the old. It was a phenomenal experience.” business and manufacturing industry with a very pure engineering background.” British Steel went so far as to back this ambition by sponsoring her for a masters degree, a move that was, she says, almost unheard of. The company even paid her a salary. “I was probably the richest masters student at the university!” Yet even after she had collected a distinction for her Masters in Advance Manufacturing Systems and Technology, the company would not offer her the line-management job she thought she had earned. Faced with such a setback, many young engineers might have accepted any conditions that a potential employer wanted to impose. Not for Burke. When GKN offered her a job, she turned down a place on what was, she says, a very good graduate scheme. Instead: “I joined as a production manager at GKN Axles. I immediately put on the white coat and went out on the shop Carol Burke FREng floor as a 22-year-old. It was a phenomenal experience.” She progressed to become Business Manager and ended up setting up Serck Services, which designs, manufactures processing orders.” The bigger a company a case of box shifting. If you are working Being good at something, and having Carol Burke’s plans to remodel her own a new factory making axles for Vauxhall. and services all types of heat exchangers. is, the slower it seems able to adapt. “In the for the aerospace sector for example, its own teaching factory, set Unipart’s operations starts with manufacturing, her A more recent business for Burke is in UK we tend to create machines. We need to engineers like to talk to engineers, consulting business apart from many of the first enthusiasm. Building on her mantra GROWING PORTFOLIO engineering consulting. The Manufacturing turn that around and become businesses.” and aerospace logistics is one of organisations who hand out advice, often that “we are not just good at manufacturing Burke says that her time at GKN taught practice is a part of Unipart’s consulting Some companies may find it easier than Unipart’s businesses. for sizeable fees. Few consultants can set exhaust systems but we are very good her: “all that I know about management business, Unipart Expert Practices. others to make this transition. Unipart, for their clients to work in a manufacturing cell at manufacturing”, she has expanded and leadership”. She certainly needs Carol Burke credits John Neill, chief example, is hardly a typical manufacturing making products for the real world. “In fact, the repertoire of her manufacturing those skills in her current role at Unipart. executive of Unipart Group, with influencing operation. The public may think of the BUSINESS VISION no other consultancy can do that. That is operations. For example, UEES has added Carol Burke joined the company in 1994, her more recent direction. He urged her, as company as a purveyor of spare parts While just about everyone else had written why we have grown as quickly as we have, engine components and fuel systems to its as Manufacturing Manager and then she puts it, to: “stop thinking about what for cars, after all, that is what people see off commodity manufacturing in the UK, and why, I think, we will go on growing.” product line. Operations Manager with Premier Exhaust you make and recognise that you are really around them. In reality, the Unipart Group, she did something different. “We said we Approximately 2,000 people from clients This diversification is partly because, as Systems. She then became MD of a good at manufacturing in general.” This with an annual turnover of more than would consider what we were good at in more than 20 countries have spent time in joint ventures, UEES and KUL have relied on new joint venture between Unipart and notion now influences not just her approach £1 billion, also has a large and growing and we would try to sell it.” It seems to Unipart. Apart from the income, what does R&D and engineering supplied by German Eberspächer Exhaust Systems (UEES). to Unipart’s operations but her thinking on logistics business as well as its consulting have worked. Unipart Expert Practices- Unipart get out of sharing its engineering partners. Carol Burke wants to create more Since then Burke has accumulated a manufacturing in the UK as a whole. Here, operation, with one customer HM Revenue Manufacturing, has grown rapidly and has skills? “Great question. Because the answer is home grown opportunities. “My dream is to growing roster of Unipart businesses to though, Burke sees other problems that and Customs. If anything, she explains, been very profitable. The consultancy helps so important to us. We get a pool of engineers drive a business through British engineering.” manage, not all of them in manufacturing, businesses need to address. “Unipart is largely not a manufacturing other people to do manufacturing well, that I could not support based on my core Here she is tapping into the expertise in but all heavily steeped in engineering. Too many manufacturing companies, or engineering company, it is a logistics she explains. Clients have included makers business.” With more than 100 engineers manufacturing that Unipart has gained from As well as UEES, Kautex Unipart Ltd (KUL) she complains, have become stuck in a rut company.” The engineering though is still of own-brand toiletries and: “big industrial working for her across all of her businesses, working with Japanese customers, especially manufactures plastic fuel tanks and fuel as they chase the next order. “You start an important part of the picture. Even in engineers”. It also helped Unipart to survive she can direct them at any problems that turn Honda and Toyota. Unipart knows all about systems. Carol Burke is also responsible for being a factory in every way. You are just logistics, Carol Burke points out, it isn’t just the recession, she says. up in Unipart’s manufacturing operations. ‘lean’ manufacturing and the other ways of

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exchangers are scattered around a nuclear assets of failed businesses so that it can who know no more than the children do, When it comes to a role model for power station. Unipart is already talking to manufacture parts that car makers rely on. so it is quite difficult.” She laughs ruefully at manufacturing and engineering in the other UK companies that also want to play a The company can also help SMEs who want the teachers who fail to show up for events UK, Burke isn’t the sort of person to make part in the UK’s nuclear revival. “It would be to supply to car makers. A small business because they are “too busy”. “And I am not an exaggerated claim about Unipart really nice to combine British engineering may have technology that would appeal busy?” she jokes. “This is about our young Manufacturing as an exemplar. She is, and manufacturing and to do something to a car maker, but it needs help to turn people,” she insists. though, convinced that its mixture of really special in this industry,” she says. it into something ‘manufacturable’. This is Burke has personal experience of this. engineering, manufacturing, and thinking Could the company end up as a where Unipart can come in. “There is a real Her six-year old son attends a school where about what you are good at is an excellent nuclear supplier with a sideline in the business opportunity there. I’m confident there are no other engineers as parents. business model for the company and who is automotive sector? “Absolutely!” Burke that, if you are talking to me in two years Fortunately, her son has role models at to say that it would not work for others? affirms: “It is so exciting.” time, we would be seen as really having home; he likes the idea that his mother helped British manufacturing.” makes ‘cool things’ for cars and that his CARBON CHALLENGES Carol Burke is passionate about father is also an engineer. Much as Carol Burke has her sights on educating a new generation and hopes It also helps that over the years Burke the nuclear revival, she has far from given that government will provide a lead. has collected a number of prestigious up on the automotive sector where she “When the government says it is awards, such as Midlands Businesswoman sees plenty of opportunities in the rush behind manufacturing, one aspect of that of the Year in 2005 and the CBI’s to reduce carbon emissions. It will be has to be to get enough young people into Real Business First Women Awards in manufacturing in 2006. Never keen on many years, she predicts, before today’s manufacturing and engineering. I sense anything that smacks of ‘token woman’ technologies disappear, and she is that that hasn’t really been sufficiently Carol Burke shows Lord Digby Jones, then Minister of State for Trade, around the Unipart prototype and thinking, Burke admits that she thought determined to exploit opportunities in thought through.” development centre in Coventry twice about accepting such accolades. It taking carbon out of cars. was only when pressed by others that The UK has advantages that it could INSPIRING FUTURE she agreed to ignore her resolve to avoid improving quality and productivity. This is, At Carol Burke’s instigation, Serck branched exploit in the rush to reduce carbon female-specific awards. After all, she after all, just what the company hired her out into new markets. This was not a emissions. For example, it supplies ENGINEERS One way that Unipart does this is by taking insists, being a woman in a male-oriented to implement when she left GKN. “We have difficult conceptual leap, she says. “The components for diesel vehicles, an area BIOGRAPHY young apprentices out to schools, trying to profession has rarely been an issue for her. persisted and deliberately practised that for engineering in a heat exchanger is not much of engineering where Japan and the Michael Kenward OBE has been a get across the message that engineering Fortunately, she has also collected various 20 years in a way that I don’t think many more advanced than the thermodynamics USA have yet to see the light. Japan has freelance writer since 1990 and is a is a worthwhile career. This isn’t always other awards, including the Institution other British manufacturing businesses have.” that was part of my mechanical engineering caught on and is working with German member of the Ingenia Editorial board. helped by the schools themselves, Burke of Engineering and Technology’s 2007 degree. What matters is the experience, the companies. Despite this, Burke says, with He is Editor-at-Large of Science|Business. complains. “You have to go via the teachers Manufacturing Achievement Medal. SERCK DIVERSIFIES years of testing it, and how you bring all of some amazement, “the Americans aren’t The combination of engineering and that together.” So, it is back to engineering interested.” Talk to them about diesels manufacturing has also driven Carol and manufacturing. and hybrid vehicles and they say it will Burke’s work with Serck, Unipart’s heat Serck now provides systems to supply never happen. Unipart are still positive exchanger business. Not for the first time, power stations, nuclear submarines and and partnerships may be made with CAREER TIMELINE AND DISTINCTIONS Carol had been handed a business that makers of wind turbines. Carol Burke US companies to bring these types of Born, 1967. BEng (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering, Liverpool University, 1989. MSc (Eng) Advanced had come upon hard times. Fortunately, also has nuclear ambitions for the heat components to the States. Manufacturing Systems, Liverpool University, 1990. Undergraduate Engineer, British Steel, 1986-1987. the engineering side of Serck, which made exchanger business. “We have got engineers In general, Carol Burke is keen to Undergraduate Engineer, United Engineering Steels, 1987-1989. Various senior technical and management develop relationships, and not just with ‘off-the-shelf’ equipment for the automotive in Serck who were involved in the first positions GKN Axles Ltd, 1990-1994. Manufacturing Manager through to Managing Director, Unipart Eberspächer UK nuclear industry.” She sees business foreign businesses. Sitting as it does business, was in good shape. “I went in Exhaust Systems Ltd, 1994-2006. Managing Director, Unipart Manufacturing Group, 2006 to date. Midlands there and it was one of the best moments I opportunities in supplying to the new between the car makers and the SMEs that have had for ages. I spoke to the engineers nuclear power stations that UK governments make parts for them, Unipart is in a great Business Woman of the Year, 2005. CBI Woman of the Year Award for Manufacturing, 2006. Nuffield medal for and I thought, these guys really know what keep promising will happen, and quickly position to be a go-between. At the most achievement in Manufacturing, 2008. Delivered Viscount Nuffield Lecture, 2009. Elected Fellow of The Royal they are doing.” reels off a list of the places where heat basic level, Unipart recently acquired the Academy of Engineering, 2010.

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