Craft Skills Research Articles

Establishing a Consistent Baseline Reference for High-Definition Cameras

With the rise of high-definition television, consistent picture quality is critical if the end user is to enjoy to the full extent of what the system has to offer. In maximizing the potential of high-definition television, the service provider must give camera line-up the attention it needs. Camera technology lightens the load on the vision engineer to use those craft skills to better advantage. Camera line-up requires more than a simple black-and-white balance at the correct exposure. In order to achieve the most consistent pictures across several days on a multicamera shoot, several factors need attention. Recent advances in line-up charts make this easier than with traditional versions, but limitations still exist. This paper showcases new camera line-up technology in which many former limitations are overcome. New technology allows analysis of a camera's colorimetric performance, identifying areas of deficiency and giving the user the tools necessary to make improvements. Finally, what does the future hold? And what can we learn from today so that future standards change for the better?

Understanding the one-to-one relationship in instrumental/vocal tuition in Higher Education: comparing student and teacher perceptions

The power of one-to-one tuition in Higher Music Education is evidenced by its continuing place at the heart of conservatoire education. The need to examine this student–teacher relationship more closely has been emphasised in the last decades by increasing understanding of processes of student learning in Higher Education as a whole, and in particular the impact which student–teacher relations have on learning. Literature on PhD supervision, for example, has highlighted the depth of applied craft skills made possible in one-to-one interaction, and has also drawn attention to a range of potential difficulties encountered in the supervisory relationship. This paper draws on findings from a study at a conservatoire in the UK, which explored student and teacher perceptions of one-to-one tuition. It analyses student and teacher perspectives on the relationship and considers the match between their perceptions within student–teacher pairs. Findings demonstrate diverse characterisation of the relationship, and varied approaches to extending a social relationship beyond the confines of the lesson. Comparison of student–teacher pairs indicates that the students tended to mirror their teachers' opinions about appropriate social interaction. This was one example of the dynamics of power operating within the one-to-one relationship, although these were rarely discussed explicitly. Such dynamics of power made it difficult in some instances for students to articulate difficulties with learning and to change teacher. There was also evidence of a possible connection between dynamics of power in the relationship and students' reluctance to develop artistic and professional self-direction. The implications of these findings are considered in terms of conceptualising one-to-one tuition, and the need to review the professional framework of its delivery in Higher Music Education.

Using Craft Tourism to Maximize Revenue of Rural Hospitality Businesses

Craft tourism is a new and very popular form of tourism under which the participants travel to seminars and craft schools often in the remote rural areas. In North America the interests in the craft tourism is presently very high. The paper discerns two types of the craft tourists: (1) people who want to participate in the remote school and/or seminar which offer the classes on certain skills and trades, (2) the craft store owners which require seminars on extending their craft skills as well as the classes on types and uses of the new products. The main idea of the paper is combining rural and craft tourism in the same place. Urban crafters visiting the rural areas become not only a source of revenue but also a source of advertising. The number of rural businesses and their small size do not allow them to generate the effective advertisement to the urban crafters. We show that craft tourism can maximize the revenue of the rural hospitality businesses in two different ways: (1) by providing the revenue stream in the off-peak season and (2) by attracting both craft tourists and their spouses in the peak-season thus maximizing hotel revenue stream. We assert that craft tourists may be both source of revenue and advertising vehicle for the rural destinations as they are often parts of craft guilds and collectives. The combination of rural and craft tourism can create a true symbiotic relationship between the rural businesses and the craft guilds.

Public Poems, Private Expenditures: Petrarch as Homo Economicus

Petrarch’s Italian poems undeniably project a view of private self hood, almost unique and certainly innovative at their time of com position. What we consider to be “private” in this representation of selfhood is also a function of Petrarch’s labor, skill, craftsmanship, and artistry to make “public”—that is, to publish—his writing for a literate readership. As the private becomes public, however, it acquires an economic valence deeply connected to a Petrarchan aes thetics. The medieval Latin noun aeconomus or yconomus derives from the Greek oikonomos meaning “household management,” referring to one’s private ordering of income and expenditures, an adminis tration of personal or family resources which later acquires a public application with respect to the administration of a business, a com munity, a corporate body, a state. I want to argue that Petrarch’s aes thetic moves from a vaguely Platonic theory based upon intuition and the power of visionary furor to an Aristotelian or Horatian con cept of art as a matter of craft and mechanical skill, and that as it does so it intersects with late medieval economic theories of labor and utility value as they give way to ever more elaborate methods of calculation, quantification, and measurement in economic practice. From the start a tension between the Platonic and Aristotelian aesthetics animates Petrarch’s fourteenth-century Rime sparse, and each relates differently to economic issues figured in the text. In Petrarch’s time, the coordinates for these aesthetics seem only barely emergent, while their economic implications appear still rooted in medieval theological assumptions. On the one hand, the Platonic formulation would correspond to an earlier, largely Augustinian view in which art, like wealth, reflects God’s plenitude and abundance as a gift to humankind, and is therefore a good. The artist’s specially privileged visionary furor reflects the natural inequality of human beings whom God endows with a variety of economic gifts and talents

Weaving a knowledge tapestry of traditional crafts for modern fashion designers: an Indian experience

Design innovations in India’s fashion products result from a fusion of modern technologies and traditional craft skills. This paper highlights the role of the National Resource Centre and the network of resource centres of the National Institute of Fashion Technology in collecting and preserving heritage resources using computer technology. Plans for a National Design Repository and for Shilpakala Jnana Kosha, a digital repository for the tacit craft knowledge of artisans, share the objectives of preserving endangered traditional skills, supporting a process of revival and optimising the use of traditional crafts in contemporary fashion design.

전통공예기술의 현대적 활용

Crafts in our country designated as an Important Intangible Cultural Property. Are protected, but not being utilized less than in everyday life. But now that the culture industry has important strategic and cultural factors that influence the competitiveness of the industrial era was. So on the activation of traditional crafts growing interest and demand, but the nature of traditional crafts are still several issues that are faced. Of course, for the protection and industrial policies and institutional mechanisms, but not without a very negative and is weak. Therefore, preservation of traditional crafts and industrial use of the technology to effectively carry out two tasks have the policy should be sought from every angle. In this study, the kind of important intangible cultural heritage of the traditional craft techniques from various angles by category, by systematically analyze the characteristics of modern man with the utilization of real-world craftsmanship with the highest tradition of finding and preserving traditional craft skills in the limit popular and can be out of the technology industry as a potential development is proposed.

Professional values: introduction to the theme

A code of practice incorporating a declaration of professional values is both a distinguishing feature and its observance a condition of membership of most professional bodies. It is in effect a summary of important aspects of how members of that body are expected to behave and informs not only the membership itself, but also interested others and the general public. Within the values espoused in such codes, we should expect to be able to identify both generic values, that is those that reflect more general commitments to for instance, honesty, integrity, confidentiality and trustworthiness, but also values that relate directly to the nature of that particular profession or related professions. Thus for healthcare professionals, those values associated with beneficence, respect for autonomy and the centrality of patient care are prominent. The group of papers that follows, evolved from a seminar on professional values in health care held at Cardiff University in August 2007 during the annual European Society for Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care conference. They do not represent a comprehensive summary or review of the values expressed in the various healthcare professionals‘ codes—these are readily available in the publications of the respective professional bodies. The intention of the papers is rather to highlight aspects that reflect either an intrinsic process of evolution in professional values, or a response to changing external demands, both welcome and unwelcome. The relevance of reflexive reasoning is a crucial aspect of a profession that is explored by Edgar (2010) who draws on the example of British artists who successfully began a process of transition from trade to profession at the end of the 18th century. Edgar argues that to establish a profession requires not only a theoretically-informed educational base but also should incorporate processes of on-going reflection on professional objectives and just what it means to be a member of that profession. For artists, unlike craftsmen, a search for beauty cannot be codified or defined prior to its realisation. It is asserted that it is this vital element of reflexivity that distinguishes professions including medicine and other healthcare disciplines from occupations dependent on craft skills alone and for which instrumental reasoning is adequate. But paradoxically, a professional risks being disenfranchised from the members of the public he or she serves who are not party to this reflexive element and thus may not share a common vision of what constitutes a satisfactory outcome. Sellman (2010) highlights the tension between institutional (managerial) and nursing (professional) practices in the UK, cautioning that nursing values, and particularly those associated with patient care are under threat from managerial controls. These threats are a consequence of a struggle by managers to accommodate severely constrained financial and human resources in a target-driven culture. Such drives for economic efficiency risk compromising core nursing values. For Sellman, as with Edgar, there is something over and above the mere mastery of technical skills that roughly equates with the internal goods of nursing. Drawing on the work of MacIntyre and others, Sellman argues that a MacIntyrean concept of (external) goods of effectiveness and (internal) goods of excellence D. Badcott (&) Centre for Applied ethics, Cardiff University, Humanities Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU, UK e-mail: badcottd@cf.ac.uk

Synchrotron-Based X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy for Art Conservation: Looking Back and Looking Forward

A variety of analytical techniques augmented by the use of synchrotron radiation (SR), such as X-ray fluorescence (SR-XRF) and X-ray diffraction (SR-XRD), are now readily available, and they differ little, conceptually, from their common laboratory counterparts. Because of numerous advantages afforded by SR-based techniques over benchtop versions, however, SR methods have become popular with archaeologists, art historians, curators, and other researchers in the field of cultural heritage (CH). Although the CH community now commonly uses both SR-XRF and SR-XRD, the use of synchrotron-based X-ray absorption spectroscopy (SR-XAS) techniques remains marginal, mostly because CH specialists rarely interact with SR physicists. In this Account, we examine the basic principles and capabilities of XAS techniques in art preservation. XAS techniques offer a combination of features particularly well-suited for the chemical analysis of works of art. The methods are noninvasive, have low detection limits, afford high lateral resolution, and provide exceptional chemical sensitivity. These characteristics are highly desirable for the chemical characterization of precious, heterogeneous, and complex materials. In particular, the chemical mapping capability, with high spatial resolution that provides information about local composition and chemical states, even for trace elements, is a unique asset. The chemistry involved in both the object's history (that is, during fabrication) and future (that is, during preservation and restoration treatments) can be addressed by XAS. On the one hand, many studies seek to explain optical effects occurring in historical glasses or ceramics by probing the molecular environment of relevant chromophores. Hence, XAS can provide insight into craft skills that were mastered years, decades, or centuries ago but were lost over the course of time. On the other hand, XAS can also be used to characterize unwanted reactions, which are then considered alteration phenomena and can dramatically alter the object's original visual properties. In such cases, the bulk elemental composition is usually unchanged. Hence, monitoring oxidation state (or, more generally, other chemical modifications) can be of great importance. Recent applications of XAS in art conservation are reviewed and new trends are discussed, highlighting the value (and future possibilities) of XAS, which remains, given its potential, underutilized in the CH community.

Plumbing skills development for a healthy future

The modern plumbing industry in Scotland developed as a result of the poor sanitary conditions of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It continues to develop into the 21st century with an increasing emphasis on accurate technological skills underpinned by well honed practical craft skills. This skills training is as a result of a competency-based education and assessment system pioneered by Scotland’s Colleges. The competency-based system allows an analysis of practical and technical skills required for plumbing, water supply and sanitation tasks. Each skill identified is taught and assessed by College staff working closely with the Scottish plumbing industry to ensure skills required by emerging technologies are integrated and that public health is protected. The experience of the Scottish plumbing industry combined with the considerable expertise in skills development of the Scottish colleges sector has the potential to make a major contribution to water and sanitation in international development and a healthy future. The competency-based model used in Scotland’s Colleges ensures that training is aligned to the current and projected needs of industry.

Taking up Arts and Crafts in Later Life: A Qualitative Study of the Experiential Factors That Encourage Participation in Creative Activities

Background and aim:Creative occupations promote wellbeing among older people, but how people discover creative occupations in later life, or why they intensify their participation in certain creative occupations after retirement, is unclear. The aim of this study was to explore the experiential factors that older women perceive as encouraging their take-up of, and participation in, visual art-making during later life.Method:Twelve older women (aged 61–80 years) were recruited through a magazine for an older readership. Their interview transcripts were subject to interpretative phenomenological analysis.Findings:A variety of distal and proximal factors appeared to encourage the take-up of art-making in later life. Distal factors included pre-existing craft skills, family role models and positive attitudes to managing change. Proximal factors included the need to fill occupational voids and the sensitive encouragement of husbands and friends. Serendipitous events featured in some accounts.Conclusion:The participants did not uniformly regard themselves as creative. None had participated in the visual arts throughout adulthood. The multiplicity of influences that enabled these older women to participate in art in later life extends previous research findings and may encourage occupational therapists to help clients to regain wellbeing through exploring novel creative arts occupations.

Analysis of Observed Skill Affinity Patterns and Motivation for Multiskilling among Craft Workers in the U.S. Industrial Construction Sector

Previous research has shown that multiskilling strategies can increase productivity, quality, and continuity of work and can also help mitigate craft shortages through better utilization of the existing workforce. Using extensive craft certification and skills data, the writers apply correlation and cluster analyses to identify actual patterns of multiskilling among craft workers using two separate data sources. The results of the cluster analysis indicate that current craft skills aggregate into four groups: civil, mechanical, electrical, and general support. It is also observed that acquiring mutually supporting skill set pairs significantly drives multiskilling strategies in practice, thus diminishing the relative impact that duration on project has on driving multiskilling practice, despite its importance in previous literature. Still, comparing the observed multiskilling patterns obtained from the skill affinity analyses with multiskilling strategies proposed by previous studies generally reinforces the potential efficacy of those strategies.

From simplicism to complexity in leadership identity and preparation: exploring the lineage and dark secrets

This article challenges the largely Western, functionalist and unitary notion of the self which underlies contemporary international approaches to educational leadership preparation. It locates an alternative concept of the self as simultaneously singular and multiple in deep‐rooted and persisting mythic, religious and metaphysical thinking. The article suggests that identity is self‐ and co‐constructed to achieve a sense of coherence, worth and belonging, primarily through ongoing narratives and relationships. As a consequence, a leader must construct an identity performance to take up the role of leader, develop narratives and adapt identities to the ongoing surveillance of an accountability audience. The article suggests that preparation, in focusing on the acquisition of technical craft skills related to administration and socialization into a generally uncontested set of values and norms, evades and miniaturizes the performance of leadership. The preparation of leaders for complex, uncertain and ambiguous roles may be supported by focusing on the mythic narratives of self and context, thereby examining how the many fluid and constantly mutating intersections of conscious and subconscious selves may be utilized to enact a self‐aware leadership.

Revolution or evolution?:The role of knowledge and organization in the establishment and growth of R & D at Corning

The rise of R & D, as it is usually told, is a story of revolution: that the coming of science to industry wiped away the irrational patterns of invention and ruthless competition and ushered in a new rational scientific order.However, the history of Corning Incorporated suggests a different view. Rather than being a revolution, R & D evolved over two decades at Corning. During this evolution, Arthur and Alanson Houghton relied on different kinds of knowledge – direct experience, craft skills, as well as science – to create new products and processes.To provide an overview of how different kinds of knowledge can be leveraged for innovation, we draw on Six Sigma methodology to create a SIPOC (Supplier-Input-Process-Output-Customer) diagram of the innovation process. Moreover, to promote innovation, the Houghtons also employed different organizational arrangements including using consultants, employing experts, creating separate companies, and establishing departments inside the company. Eventually, the company did hire scientists and establish a Chemical Department in 1908, but we would argue that this tradition of using different forms of knowledge and experimenting with organizational arrangements preceded the Chemical Department and continues to inform how R & D is practiced today at Corning.

Engaging Academic and Nonacademic Communities through Online Scholarly Work

Engaging Academic and Nonacademic Communities through Online Scholarly Work Avi Santo (bio) and Christopher Lucas (bio) The decline of public intellectual culture has become a commonplace concern among academics, and many of us in the field of cinema and media studies, [End Page 129] although members of a young discipline, share these concerns over the nature of our contribution to society. Whether we see our field as populated by pawns and players in the left-right culture wars or anodyne purveyors of social uplift, craft skills, and critical faculties, the interface of the academy with the wider concerns of the public is a preoccupation for many scholars. As evidenced by a rising tide of editorials and essays in forums such as the Chronicle of Higher Education, digital technologies—particularly the Internet and related social networking tools—have exacerbated these concerns about praxis.1 With the rise of DIY culture, user-generated content, and ubiquitous online video, an explosion of oral, textual, and visual cultural production has presented scholars with both a threat to established hierarchies of declamation and authority and an opportunity to engage their students and the wider public in new ways. Our goal here is to provide a snapshot of media studies in relation to the current possibilities for digital scholarship by posing these questions: How are media studies academics responding to the new media ecologies? What are they doing with these tools? What might be done? Does this new cultural formation call for new commitments and ways of thinking about scholarship, particularly if these technologies hold at once the promise of praxis and a threat to the traditions of scholarly engagement with the public? In March 2008, we distributed an informal survey via the Cultural Studies listserv and the MediaCommons e-mail list that asked participants to report their attitudes and practices around online scholarly work (writing, media, or other forms of online production) as a means of engaging nonacademic communities. Because there is an unavoidable degree of self-selection that accompanies Web-based surveys, as well as bias implicit in appealing to current readers of MediaCommons and listserv subscribers, the findings we offer here are in no way indicative of the entire field of cinema and media studies, and the analysis should be viewed as preliminary at best. Our respondents should be seen as already comfortable, if not advanced, users of digital technologies. Nonetheless, without making strong claims for the validity of these findings for all media scholars, we believe the responses reveal interesting trends and concerns worthy of comment.2 Attitudes and Scholarly Practices Online. Our respondents overwhelmingly agreed that online scholarly work presented media scholars with new opportunities to engage nonacademic communities (96 percent of respondents either agreed or somewhat agreed with this statement). Still, the survey revealed tremendous gaps between the types and amounts of online work our respondents produce and the types of work they believed had the greatest potential to engage nonacademic communities. Moreover, the responses revealed somewhat conflicted attitudes about the groups academics see as their primary constituents and the role of online work in reaching those constituencies (Table 1). As Table 1 shows, respondents reported a very high estimation of the potential for certain digital modes of communication to engage nonacademic communities. We found it notable, though, that in contrast to this rather high perception of [End Page 130] potential, the number of scholars currently engaged in these types of work was for the most part quite small. Participation in these types of work ranged from 7 percent in moderating fan forums and producing podcasts, to 73 percent in listserv participation, but it was clear that respondents are much more likely to produce words in their online work (listservs, blogging) and much less likely to produce artistic or audiovisual media (podcasts, mash-ups, fictional works). Notably, these are the types of work considered most likely to engage nonacademic communities (Table 2). Table 1. Respondents reporting "a lot" or "some" potential for types of online scholarly work in engaging nonacademic communities. Type of scholarly work Percentage (%) Blogging 94 Writing popular criticism for online magazines 93 Creating artistic/fictional works 86 Producing podcasts 84 Commenting on other people's blogs 82...

Digital Scholarship and Pedagogy, the Next Step: Cultural Science

Digital Scholarship and Pedagogy, the Next Step:Cultural Science John Hartley (bio) "How well he's read, to reason against reading!" (Love's Labour's Lost, I.i.94) There are two aspects to the problem of digital scholarship and pedagogy. One has to do with scholarship, the other with pedagogy. In scholarship, the association of [End Page 138] knowledge with its printed form remains dominant. In pedagogy, the desire to abandon print for "new" media is urgent, at least in some parts of the academy. Film and media studies are thus at the intersection of opposing forces pulling the field "back" to print and "forward" to digital media. These tensions may be especially painful in a field whose own object of study is an analogue form of communication, neither print nor digital. Although print has been overtaken in the popular marketplace by audiovisual forms, this was never achieved in the domain of scholarship. Even when it is digitally distributed, the output of research is still a "paper." Meanwhile, in the realm of teaching, production- and practice-based pedagogy has become firmly established. Nevertheless, a disjunction remains between high-end scholarship in research universities and vocational training in teaching institutions. Neither is well equipped to deal with the digital challenge. Knowing and Doing. Common sense suggests that knowing and doing are intricately linked. But doing has been separated from knowing in formal education. Harking back to a medieval distinction between action and contemplation, some professional practitioners assert that practical "doing" is in opposition to academic "knowing"; so the best (indeed, the only) qualification for teaching in universities is that of having worked in the industry. Among the media-related disciplines, journalism education is especially wedded to this idea. Those who have not worked as an employee in the newsroom culture of industrial-era media organizations are not always welcome in J-schools. It seems the students are too busy doing journalism to spare a thought (as it were) for studying its historical development, social impact, and cultural form, or for considering critical theories about journalism. Is this the future of pedagogy and scholarship for cinema and media studies? Are they destined, like journalism, to favor doing over knowing—craft skills over conceptual models, practice over research, contact with industry personnel over contact with scholarship, and the fetishization of the current industrial form over the study of a given medium's historical development, social problems, or untried potential? The trouble is, the further the field has pushed toward practical pedagogy, the further it seems to have retreated from scholarship. Would a move toward more active scholarly engagement with the digital and audiovisual media, that is, knowing through doing, hasten or prevent such a future? Obviously, some media and film production programs are already committed to the practical path, but these remain exceptions. In general, the two fields remain founded in social problems (media) and textual forms (cinema). Typically, practice-based teaching is an adjunct to traditional forms of pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment. Unlike journalism education, cinema and media studies are not generally vocationally oriented in an instrumental way. Not many film or media companies are organized along the lines of large-scale corporations with standardized entry-level recruitment. Nor do media courses face a coherent professional body along the lines of the law, medicine, engineering—or, indeed, [End Page 139] journalism, which does have professional ambitions (but is reluctant to concede entry certification to universities). What faces the media graduate is not a stable industry or profession with a career structure, but a globalizing market with chaotic needs. This market is characterized by rapid change, high failure rates, high rates of casual and freelance labor, winner-take-all innovation, team-based and project-based companies that dissolve and re-form around opportunities, and the certainty that everything they know, from enabling technologies to production processes, will be obsolete all too soon. Faced with such a prospect, where the technologies they may use are not yet invented, the name for their job is not yet known, and the global enterprise in which they might do it is not yet formed, what—and how—does the newly minted media graduate need to know...

Choosing appropriate teaching and training techniques

This paper describes an approach to teaching and training techniques based on types of human memory and skill and on cognitive biases. The focus is on low level 'craft skill' techniques. The first part of the paper shows how a framework of explicit, semi-tacit and tacit types of memory and skill can provide guidance on choice of appropriate teaching and training techniques. The second part describes how training and teaching can turn human cognitive biases to advantage by presenting material in ways which make it more accessible and memorable. We also briefly describe some of the underlying neurophysiological issues involved.

Directions and Displacements in Modern Craft

Modern craft circulates in many forms: in objects, in the hands and heads of people, and in the language of companies who sell 'artisanal' goods of all kinds. Most importantly, perhaps, it takes the form of imagery. Even the phrase 'modern craft' with its hint of the oxymoronic implies a positioning of sorts; not merely skill or technique, but craft specifically under the conditions of modernity, to which it has a complicated and often antagonistic relationship. The following essay concerns this matter of representation. It attempts to track a few of the ways in which craft skill has been displaced within modernity by focusing particularly on contemporary directions stemming from modern craft's long history. In this mapping, depiction is crucial, for ironically it is within the field of representation that craft does the most effective work.

More Than Tea and Scones?

From 1956 to 1962 the Country Women’s Association (CWA) in New South Wales attempted to assist the assimilation of Aboriginal women into white rural communities by establishing Aboriginal CWA branches on mission stations and reserves. White CWA members were encouraged to ‘mix’ with their Aboriginal counterparts at joint meetings, sharing their skills in cookery, craft and domestic management. This article examines the experiences of CWA women at Griffith in South Western New South Wales. Given the conservative world view of CWA members and the firmly entrenched colour-bar in rural communities, the paper questions how and why such an initiative succeeded. This article has been peer-reviewed.

The transformation competence perspective

Reflections on a number of participative projects have led to the conclusion that, when planning and conducting OR interventions, particular attention should be paid to the transformation to be attempted and to the competence of those who will be involved. The transformation required by a consulting project sets the scope of the ambition that is to be met by the craft skills and expertise of people, supported if appropriate by pre-defined methods. Competence refers to the skills, time and the ability to act of those involved in the intervention. In designing an intervention, activities have to be planned in the light of the transformation required, the competences of those involved and the pre-defined methods available. Pre-defined methods are characterized in terms of their transformation potential, the transformation that can be achieved by using the method in a specific context. The paper elaborates the proposed transformation competence perspective drawing on personal practical experience; its aim is to articulate an approach to the design of participative consulting interventions and compare it with alternatives.

The effects of new technology adoption on employee skills in the prosthetics profession

Rapid manufacturing (RM) is an emerging technology that is set to revolutionize how products are manufactured. Past research has centred on processes, materials and costing, neglecting the vital issue of how the implementation of this new technology will affect the skills of workers. This work aims to evaluate how the skills of professionals working in the field of prosthetics are likely to be affected by the introduction of RM. Currently a highly skilled, manual process, this paper explores the hypothesis that the manufacture of prosthetic sockets would change fundamentally with the introduction of RM technology. This was evaluated through the use of the job characteristics model, which assesses the skills change and job satisfaction implications of applying new technology to traditional manufacturing processes. Conclusions showed that RM would have a significant impact on job roles in the prosthetics industry. Analysis found a positive outlook for the prosthetist, with the new technology increasing computer-based skills, and traditional prosthetic skills continuing to be used. The prosthetic technician bears the major impact, deskilled by the loss of many of the craft skills. However, the new role may appeal to the younger generation, and lowered skill requirements may help increase prosthetics services worldwide.