Working in a bar provided a UCD graduate with the inspiration to develop an electronic device which measures how much beer is left in a keg after it has been tapped. Mr Iain Campion, a mechanical engineer from Dublin, won this year's Hewlett-Packard Award for his Non-Invasive Volume Sensor, which saves users having to lift kegs and weigh them while stock-taking. Mr Dave Young, managing director of Hewlett-Packard's manufacturing operations at Leixlip, Co Kildare, said the innovative design showed how successful Ireland's educational system was in producing quality graduates.

The device calculates the volume of liquid in the keg through analysis of its sound vibrations. Mr Young said the plant at Leixlip employed 200 engineers and was in the process of taking on about 50 people a week as part of its plans to operate a fully integrated ink jet cartridge manufacturing facility for its computer printers.

The plant currently employs 1,200 people but there are plans to increase this to 3,000 by 2001, half of whom will be graduates. He said that, while it was getting "tighter" in the market place to recruit technicians, the company had not experienced problems yet. "Two years ago when we started out, there was a much larger market for top people. We have found the people we are getting are top quality people and they are ready to work. We have had no problem meeting our production schedules," he said.

Worldwide, the company is the second largest computer maker and has 120,500 employees. In its third quarter, to July 31st last, net income was $617 million (£419 million), a figure which fell short of expectations on Wall Street because of slow sales but compared well to $410 million for the same period a year earlier.