Professor Kumar Bhatt, founder and head of Warwick Manufacturing Group （WMG), and Rob Meak

Professor Kumar Bhatt, founder and head of Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), and Rob Meakin, a personnel director at Marconi, have developed a partnership to train engineers and managers to become e-literate. The New Knowledge Partnership will include a team of 40 Marconi managers in what Professor Bhatt calls electronic engineering management or E2. A wide range of engineering and non-engineering companies has expressed interest in these exciting programs.

Professor Bhatt believes that e-commerce is changing the business environment to a huge extent. Many chief executives do not understand the power of the new technologies and, in some cases, are actually resisting change. He says, "as long as enough industry leaders realize its potential benefits, e-business will make possible a second productivity revolution in Britain. This could take the economy close to eliminating the still substantial competitiveness gap with its main rivals. Over the last five years in the US there has been a 30% improvement in manufacturing sector productivity because of information technology. In Britain we can achieve more than that and successful e-business will be worth billions to the UK economy. " Already Britain makes more use of computer-aided design and manufacture (CAD/CAM) and management information technology systems than other European countries, and has a government. that actively promotes e-business.

But, observes Professor Bhatt, Britain has never used technology as a growth driver. "The thing about electronic engineering management is that you can keep your legacy systems; you just need to link those systems with an information engine. At the touch of a button it will allow project managers to see the status of a project, identify problems precisely and make virtually immediate decisions based on information that will be much more complete than in the past. "

The E2 program is the result of an alliance by the Warwick Manufacturing Group with America's leading e-commerce study center, Carnegie Mellon. The latter will be responsible for training many of the Marconi managers in America, where the group has half its business. In Britain, Professor Bhatt has linked up with Sun Microsystems, Oracle and Parametric Technology, to set up a multi-million pound E2 design and manufacturing center at the university which will be used for training and research.

Professor Bhatt believes that e-commerce is changing business to such an extent that WMG is likely to be renamed Warwick Electronic Manufacturing Group. But, he warns "The move to globalize because of e-commerce is racing ahead. Although the net allows British industry to overtake their European peers, it also offers Asian countries to leapfrog (跃过) the West. For the first time it is not the privilege of the western world because this technology is universal. "

Professor Bhatt and Rob Meakin have developed a method to ______ .

A．teach electronic engineering management

B．train employees to be acquainted with e-commerce

C．train employees to be engineers and managers

D．teach employees about developing a partnership