Yaskawa Motoman and RAMTEC Form Ohio Manufacturing Workforce Partnership

Yaskawa Motoman (Miamisburg, OH) and RAMTEC (Robotics & Advanced Manufacturing Technology Education Collaborative; Marion, OH) have formed the strategic Ohio Manufacturing Workforce Partnership that will support the State of Ohio in creating a highly sustainable workforce development model and will provide state educators and students with STEM-aligned curriculum and training in order to become proficient in Industry 4.0 technologies. Fueling RAMTEC’s involvement in this partnership is their core mission to partner with real-world manufacturing facilities to help identify and supply the needs of the manufacturing industry. The entire project development funding is earmarked for $400,000 to provide a comprehensive training and application development model that will reach thousands of incumbent workers and students statewide.

RAMTEC is a trusted accreditor of both high school and adult robotics manufacturing licensures and certifications that seeks to create sustainable solutions for filling Ohio’s robotics and advanced manufacturing skills gap. “Data reveals that within ten years nearly 3.5 million manufacturing jobs will sit empty, with the skills gap being responsible for 2 million of those jobs going unfilled,” said Ritch Ramey, the coordinator and an engineering instructor at RAMTEC. “Forming mutually-beneficial relationships with manufacturers through the Ohio Manufacturing Workforce Partnership will create the foundation needed to move our state workforce forward.”

Yaskawa Motoman is a leading robotics manufacturer that is dedicated to collaborating closely with educators and industry professionals across the Americas to help build a relevant workforce training environment through educational tools and STEM curriculum. “Our workforce-driven training and research partnership with RAMTEC is a solid step to providing students with work-based learning opportunities in the field of robotics,” said Doug Burnside, the vice president of sales and marketing at Yaskawa Motoman. “The best-in-class instruction and certification programs provided through our Yaskawa Academy will also help to enhance RAMTEC’s vision of providing proficient training and curriculum in 21st century automation and robotics.”

Highlights of this partnership will include the creation of in-lab and classroom instructional strategies, the development of advanced industry-recognized robotic certifications, the utilization of augmented and virtual reality (VR) technologies to develop a new class of training tools and curriculum, and the incorporation of industry-utilized robotic equipment aligned to the industrial manufacturing base. The on-going identification and creation of new training models to support the robotics manufacturing pipeline will also continue.

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