Visionary Center for Sustainable Communities
Student taking part in the Let’s Grow (STEAM)x Youth College and Career Expo this November in Columbus, Ga., check out the mobile classroom of the Visionary Center for Sustainable Communities. The classroom will be a new attraction at the Work Truck Show in Indianapolis in early March.
Like many people involved in equipment manufacturing, Bill Gaines has found plenty of evidence that jobs frequently outnumber workers qualified to do them.
The chairman and senior engineer at Transfer Flow Inc., a Chico, Calif.-based aftermarket fuel tank system maker, Gaines said he’s been searching for a press brake operator for a full three years. He’s had no luck, and he’s got a good hunch about one of the reasons it’s such a struggle: the opportunities for someone to learn the trade are few and far between.
“You want to know how many high schools here are teaching to program, or even have a press
THOMAS DEL BRASE
“There is no question this generation knows technology. But we’re not giving them the opportunity to use it.”— Bill Gaines, chairman and senior engineer, Transfer Flow Inc.
brake?” Gaines said. “Not one. Not one high school and not one of the four community colleges have a CNC (computer numerical control) press brake.”
As manufacturers across the country brace for a wave of Baby Boomers retiring, many are struggling to fill their spots — or even to know where to look for the right workers. But increasingly, manufacturers, schools, colleges and outside groups are trying out new ways to boost the pipeline of manufacturing workers before the employment gaps get too big to bear.
Focus of Work Truck Show discussion
Gaines will make the case for better teacher training at the 2018 Work Truck Show in Indianapolis this March. Joining him in a discussion about building up the manufacturing workforce will be Kirste Webb, executive director of the Visionary Center for Sustainable Communities, a nonprofit group working to tackle the same challenges Gaines is working on. Their session happens on the show’s opening day — Tuesday, March 6 — from 3 to 4:15 p.m.
The show, taking place at the Indiana Convention Center, runs until March 9. It begins with a Green Truck Summit, Fleet Technical Conference, and other educational sessions on March 6. The exhibition hall is open March 7-9.
Webb’s group works with schools, colleges and businesses, using a mobile classroom to show
“We’ve been pushing kids to go for degrees, asking what college are you going to go to, what are you going to major in. It’s not: what do you want to do for a living? Which is where it needs to go.”— Kirste Webb, executive director, the Visionary Center for Sustainable Communities
off the latest trends and technology in manufacturing and get future manufacturing workers interested in pursuing a career. The center is bringing the mobile classroom to the Work Truck Show for the first time and will set it up in the Ride-and-Drive area.
“We know that manufacturers have the need and often will hire kids coming out of high school,” said Webb, whose organization is headquartered in Knoxville, Tenn. “The issue we found is that the kids don’t know that it’s even possible, so this program gets them up close and personal with the manufacturing industry.”
The first step in building that interest is usually dispelling a few myths about manufacturing, Webb said. The big ones: that robotics are eliminating jobs, rather than transforming jobs, and that manufacturing is “dirty, dark and dangerous,” rather than a safe and often high-tech career path.
A third major issue is in how students are taught to think about their futures from an early age, Webb said.
“We’ve been pushing kids to go for degrees, asking what college are you going to go to, what are you going to major in,” she said. “It’s not: what do you want to do for a living? Which is where it needs to go.”
New approach for smaller firms
In northern California, Gaines is part of an effort called the Grow Manufacturing Initiative, which aims to link manufacturing instructors with help and advice from the manufacturers in need of more workers.
While larger companies can attract and train new workers with apprenticeship programs, that approach just isn’t feasible for many smaller operations, Gaines said. He says it’s best to make sure teachers in middle and high schools, along with colleges and tech schools, have the right skills and tools to help prepare their students before their first day on the job.
“If we can train the teachers in those technologies and be a part of that, then they can teach hundreds of their students,” he said. “It’s a numbers game.”
At the moment, too many schools and colleges focus their manufacturing and trade programs around outdated technology, Gaines said. Many are still training students in AutoCAD even though most manufacturing companies are now using SolidWorks for design, he pointed out.
Those kinds of gaps pose problems for two reasons, Gains said. They don’t prepare students for the kind of work they’d actually encounter at today’s manufacturing companies; and they don’t make the case for why manufacturing can be an exciting, well-paying and forward-looking career.
“There is no question this generation knows technology,” he said. “But we’re not giving them the opportunity to use it.”
Battling outdated perceptions
Both Webb and Gaines said many young people don’t think of manufacturing as work that will pay well and allow for a comfortable life, or of training programs as meaningful education.
“It’s a perception of what the job is,” Webb said. “In my era growing up it was called vocational school, and (being in) vocational school meant you struggled to get good grades. That’s not right.”
Webb’s mobile classroom approach aims to show students the range of possibilities open to them in manufacturing. That could mean building service bodies or other components for vehicles. Or, as she explained to one student set on a career in fashion design, it could mean learning to design and build a wide variety of products.
The mobile classroom is also a useful recruitment and training tool for military veterans trying to figure out how to transition into civilian careers.
Different thinking needed
Webb recommends that companies looking to hire manufacturing workers should think differently about how they search for the right job candidates — whether they are recent graduates or people make mid-career transitions. Instead of focusing on a specific path someone has taken through school and work, she suggests honing in on the skills that are needed to get the job done.
Too often, Webb said, potential hires are tossed out only because they don’t check all the education and experience boxes on the application form. And people with advanced degrees or significant experience often expect they can enter directly into management roles, which aren’t always the best fit.
“When you go to a career fair, teach the recruiters how to change the language, or send a programmer or project manager,” she said.
Gaines and Webb said it’s going to be crucial that manufacturers are willing to work together — and share their knowledge and resources with others — to reverse the ongoing trend of worker shortages in manufacturing.
“My biggest message when we go out is that manufacturing is really cool,” Webb said. “It’s trying to change how we look at the industry, and how we talk about the industry.”
— Erin Golden