Taiwanese universities and educating future manufacturing managers

Abstract

Examines how potential manufacturing managers are educated in 19 Taiwanese universities. It looks at undergraduate, postgraduate and post‐experience programmes in these institutions. The authors established that there was a limited availability of suitable modern manufacturing management textbooks in Chinese. It was found that only one in ten universities expected to increase its provision of courses in this area, which is one central to the Taiwanese economy. Equally, one in ten expected to reduce its efforts. It was found that less than 40 percent of universities had any programmes at any level in the subject area. We also established that the level of industrial involvement in either helping design courses, instructing on them or providing hands‐on projects was low. In terms of future careers we found that very few of those taking the few places available had ambitions to become manufacturing managers.