The report identified challenges and growth opportunities, cited identified best practices, and set out strategies for a path forward. In the area on opportunities for education and training, the industry standard in mechatronics under development by the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute (PMMI) was cited as a best practice.The report entitled
The Interconnected Relationship was authored by the Pennsylvania Center for Advanced Manufacturing Careers and was just released by the Governor's office. Although not yet posted at the time of this writing, it will be available soon on
Pennsylvania's workforce development website.The very first paragraph of the report included a brief list of well-known PA companies that are leaders in American product development and manufacturing. More than half of these companies are high-volume packagers. PA has recognized that when we speak of advanced manufacturing, we aren't just talking about CNC metal working. Packagers have a significant need for highly skilled machine operators, industrial maintenance and mechatronics technicians.In looking at this broader and more diverse manufacturing universe, the report says; "As Pennsylvania's economic recovery accelerates, our manufacturing sector will be challenged by higher skill requirements, an aging workforce and the lack of an effective talent pipeline. The commonwealth's manufacturers must have access to a deeper pool of skilled and adaptable workers in order to respond to the competitive demands of a rapidly evolving global economy."Three challenges and their corresponding growth opportunities, related to this need, are identified and further developed in the body of the report.Challenge 1 is attracting the best and brightest into manufacturing with the corresponding growth opportunity being getting the word out to the community. Seventy-one percent of Americans feel that developing a strong manufacturing base should be a national priority, yet 61% believe that our public schools are not encouraging young people to pursue manufacturing careers. PMMI has been working on this for a while, through activities such as the education pavilion at PackExpo and sponsoring educators to attend the show.Challenge 2 is the aging workforce preparing to retire. Compared to other sectors, manufacturing workers are disproportionally older, something that we have known for a while. What is new is research that shows that the economic downturn created a logjam of workers who postponed retirement until signs of sustained recovery are visible. The growth opportunity is that younger workers who are already employed in manufacturing will benefit from accelerated advancement opportunities and adequately prepared and motivated high school, trade school and college students will have a wide range of employment opportunities. Not cited in the report are the opportunities for many of us younger retired folks to return to the workforce to help fill the gaps.Which brings us to challenge 3, filling the gaps. The list of the top 10 jobs that US empolyers are struggling to fill worldwide include technicians at number 1, skilled trades at number 4 and production operators at number 5. What is new is the definition of "basic skills" for these jobs. Basic skills now include applied math, communication, and computer skills. Intermediate skills include quality systems, process improvement processes, statistical measurement, preventative maintenance and blue print reading. Gone forever are the days of looking for people with strong backs able to do repetitive tasks.One would think that this would be an ideal situation for an advanced, college-oriented society like our own. But the truth is, that the US lags in both math and science skills when measured against Japan, Germany, the UK, Canada, Czech Republic, Hungary and Polland. This creates the 3rd growth opportunity, the need for education and training for both students and incumbent workers.This is the area where PMMI is really helping. By creating an industry recognized skill standard for industrial maintenance and mechatronics related to the packaging industry, PMMI is filling a huge void. This standard may be used by schools and industry across the country to measure how well their people and programs measure up. By providing transportable certificates, workers will have something of value which will help them be adaptable and mobile within and across industries. Employers will have an indication of skills mastered, helping in their recruiting efforts and reducing their need for internal training. With stackable and articulated programs, such as PMMI's, students are able to broker training for college credit and will be able to move those credits across institutions, resulting in stackable credentials, stackable degrees, and the ability to go back and forth seemlessly from school to work. In big bold type, the PA report says; "
Students studying mechatronics will have a high degree of mobility within and between career paths, making mechatronics one of the hottest new stars on the workforce horizon."PA and other states have recognized and acted upon the need to move from a temporary focus on the unemployed to a strategic focus on workforce development for the purpose of economic development. If you've not been among the unemployed in the last 10 years, but like many of us have been inwardly focused on your company's needs, you may have missed this shift. It is an important one that your company can leverage for competitive advantage.I have been extremely fortunate in having been able to devote significant amounts of time while in the corporate world and the majority of my time in 8 years in the consulting world to an area that I am passionate about. That makes work more fun. That area is precisely the area that this report focuses upon: the need to develop our workforce for global competitiveness. In my role as the founding director of the OMAC Packaging Workgroup, we strived to alert packagers and machine builders to the impact of servo and mechatronic technology and the need for education and standards. Building upon that work, I had the opportunity to write a curriculum for an Associate Degree in mechatronics engineering technology for a community college. This has been articulated to two of the US's leading universities and two more are in process of articulating it to a Bachelor's Degree.With a curriculum in place, I was given the opportunity to establish and manage the
PA Industrial Maintenance Training Center that is providing mechatronics skill training to hundreds of workers, many of whom are packagers. I helped establish the South Central PA Center of Excellence in Packaging Operations to attract and retain packagers by providing them with the tools needed to maintain a skilled workforce. I chair the Mid-Atlantic Mechatronics Advisory Council, a group working with PMMI and schools across the country to define necessary mechatronics skillsets. In that role, together with PMMI, we convinced the US Department of Labor to adopt our skills standards and I have been able to assist PMMI in defining skills and developing tests for their mechatronics certificates. I enjoy ancillary tasks such as judging science fairs or talking to 5th graders about manufacturing.It has all been good, and I hope that you, the readers of OnTheEdgeBlog don't get bored hearing about my passion for technology education. If you'd like to learn more, download the PA report, read through past blog articles, or check out
my website. If you'd like to get involved in this sort of thing or if I can help you or your company in any way in similar endeavors, let me hear from you.
