Most time served engineers with HND or equivalent were more advanced in years so the trade off between eager younger reps who were happy with lots of calls per day against those who may get around less but could generally resolve issues better once they got there.

My concern was that the paper based degree system was not a real substitute for a more practical attributes but the latter were becoming less common.

I sold my shares and got out over ten years ago, so not up to date, but it was always an issue.

Mind you, manufacturing industry is more specialist and less common place these days.