The Comeback Player of the Year: Manufacturing

• Focus on ensuring that young workers are obtaining the skills needed for careers in manufacturing.  Companies in our sector offer good jobs at very competitive wages. However, high schools are now judged by the number of students who go on to a four-year college, so they are eliminating shop courses and steering kids away from two-year technical colleges and vocational schools, no matter the student’s skill set or interest.

Innovative initiatives by the industry include the American Welding Society (AWS; Miami, FL) working with the Boy Scouts of America to offer a Welding merit badge. Scouts earning their Welding merit badges will not only explore the fundamentals of welding, but will also learn about the different career paths within the industry. PMA has started a Women in Manufacturing initiative to attract more women to the industry.

• We need to do our part to attract and train skilled workers. In order for manufacturers to grow our industry and attract talent to our shops, we must change the public’s perception of manufacturing through a grassroots marketing effort.

National Manufacturing Day, which took place on October 5, is one such a grassroots program. Co-produced by the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association, International (FMA; Rockford, IL) with the National Association of Manufacturers (Washington, DC), The Manufacturing Institute (Washington, DC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology – Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NIST-MEP; Washington, DC), this program encourages every manufacturer to open their doors and invite their community in to experience modern 21st-century manufacturing facilities.

A special emphasis is placed upon inviting schools to take advantage of these open houses and send student groups on manufacturing field trips. 2012 was the first year for this program and nearly 200 open houses across the country participated. Experience proves that partnerships with nonprofit organizations and community colleges spawn further technical and skills training opportunities. Where skills training programs do not exist, approach individual companies and schools to get them started.

• The military is a great resource for skilled workers. Our industry should reach out to veterans. For example, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME; Dearborn, MI) initiated a program with the U.S. Army to provide military-to-civilian engineering certification for the tens of thousands of servicemen and women who will be exiting the service over the coming years as the U.S. military winds down its operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Comeback of Manufacturing will be on display at the FABTECH Expo in Las Vegas on November 12-14. The event is proof that manufacturing has returned to be a driving force of our economy, displaying the latest products and bringing together an estimated 25,000 buyers and sellers from across the U.S. and around the world.

Beyond that, the central question of how we sustain the comeback will be a central theme at the FABTECH education conference that is being held during the show. You don’t want to miss it. We’ll see you in Las Vegas.