JOACHIM BELZ is looking for engineers. The chief executive of Weidmüller, a German maker of components for the electrical and electronics industries, wants to hire 200 in the next two years but he has a problem: there are not enough of them.

"We have problems filling these posts as quickly as we would like," he says. "But we have complained long enough about it in Germany. Now we have to find a solution."

It is a sentiment echoed not just around Germany, the supposed land of engineering, but across much of Europe. Companies from Spain to Switzerland are finding it hard to recruit skilled employees domestically, a trend that could affect long-term growth.

So how are they tackling the issue? The answer is a series of far-sighted measures from visiting primary schools to creating companies inside universities.

The steps taken by Weidmüller, which is based between Hanover and Dortmund, are typical. For long-term results, it sends managers into local junior schools to play science-based games with children from eight years old.

"It could take us 10-15 years to reap the fruits from this but we are being deliberately long-term," Belz says. Older students and teachers are invited to factories to see how products are made.

"We need to get them excited about the wonders of science," he adds.

Weidmüller spends €5 million a year on education programmes, not an inconsiderable sum given its turnover of €500 million. That includes paying for students to take a degree - about €60,000 per student - as well as for work placements, visits to colleges abroad and a dual programme in which study is combined with technical training in the company. "We get a good return on investment - we can win all these people for us," says Belz.

Other companies go even further. Bosch, Siemens and ThyssenKrupp all work with kindergartens to try to get children interested in science from as early an age as possible. Siemens provides kindergartens with a "discovery box" containing experiments for three- to six-year-olds ranging from electricity to the environment and water.

"We want to get them to learn things in a playful not a pedagogic way and they can learn so much more at that age than they can later," Maria Schumm-Tschauder, the project co-ordinator, says.

Thomas Kaeser, chief executive of Kaeser Kompressoren, says it is also important to invite teachers to see how a factory operates.

"They are normally totally shocked at how different it is from their preconceptions," he says.

ThyssenKrupp, the steelmaker, has set up IdeenPark, or Ideas Park. Vast halls are filled with hands-on experiments for children - and adults - such as understanding how a bobsleigh works and designing their own electrical circuits. Almost 300,000 people, many of them children, visited the last event in Stuttgart. "It was a great success," says chief executive Ekkehard Schulz.

It is not just companies that are focusing long-term. In Spain, the provincial government of Biscay helped set up an industrial park outside Bilbao. José Luis Bilbao, the head of the government, says: "Our biggest problem here is the lack of human resources so the park helps tackle that."

But companies are having to act in the short term too. VDI, the German association of engineers, estimates there are 95,000 vacant posts for engineers - up from 18,000 just three years ago. That is due both to a surging demand for engineers and the lack of students in technical universities.

Instead, companies are seeking to co-operate more with local universities. Lenze, a German maker of mechanical drives, has set up three companies inside technical colleges in an attempt to commercialise innovations and attract engineers to it. "That has helped us keep our lead in filing patents in our sector," says chief executive Erhard Tellbüscher.

Weidmüller invites 10 students each year to a weeklong "summer academy". Belz, like other engineering executives in European industry, says the losers from the lack of skilled workers will not be companies but countries. "If you can't get the engineers for the tasks at your base then you have to bring the tasks to where the engineers are," he says.