Join me along with representatives of PwC and The Manufacturing Institute for a Twitter Chat next Tuesday at 1 pm EDT. #MFGTalent
How does all this digital technology we talk about affect manufacturing jobs? What will the future look like.
Here is another one of those cool PwC research reports regarding manufacturing workforce. As always when talking about the present and future workforce, there is good news, bad news, and idle speculation.
We must remember that many of us are filling roles that didn’t exist ten years ago. How many jobs will exist in ten years that we can’t even imagine!
PwC, along with the Manufacturing Institute, surveyed 120 US manufacturers, and found that many are still split on the issue of talent shortage – 31% of manufactures believe there is no manufacturing skills shortage now, but there will be in 3 years, while 29% believe there is one and it will only get worse.
Other stats surveyed and topics discussed in the report include:
Upskilling manufacturing: How technology is disrupting America’s industrial labor force placed special emphasis on how advanced manufacturing technologies are impacting workforce dynamics. “What we found is that while there is indeed some jitteriness over skills gaps, manufacturers are working to close those gaps. But we’re still in the early stages.”
I wonder how much of the worry is caused by idle speculation from the press searching for page views? Bad news hyped is as good a formula as “10 ways to attract the opposite sex” for getting clicks to your site. The fact that so many are taking immediate steps to “upskill” their workforce is gratifying.
Too often we forget that people are the most important asset. They come not only with two hands, but they also come with a brain. The more we encourage them to develop and use that brainpower, the more successful our enterprise will be.
I just read yet another survey where people think we won’t have any manufacturing jobs in 50 years (or pick your number). Robots and automation will do everything. We will all just sit around, be poor and miserable–except for the few owners.
That begs one essential question. If no one has money to buy things, then what will manufacturing produce? Think about it. Who would be able to buy gasoline, dish washing detergent, Oreo cookies? What we have is a virtuous circle: people have jobs -> people have money -> they buy things -> companies develop new things for them to buy -> people work at those companies to develop and manufacture things -> people have jobs-> etc.
We’ve invested in automation and robots for years. Productivity has not necessarily gone up as a direct result. Read between the lines of yesterday’s post from MAPI.
I’m not arguing from some abstract economic theory. Nor am I sanguine about automation. Nor from a Luddite point of view.
Automation and robots have replaced workers. But if you were in manufacturing plants prior to 1970 and then returned in 2000, you’d have been shocked. Jobs that literally destroyed the bodies of the workers over time had been redesigned such that repetitive lifting of 50 lb. to 75 lb. objects all day, for example, were no longer done manually. Manufacturing jobs that put people in harms’ way were now done with robots. People were moved to safety.
Plants are healthier, cleaner, safer than ever thought possible. Manufacturing jobs that remain are better paying, more satisfying, and safer than before.
Then let’s look at the human spirit. We were made to create.
I have visited the old city dump in Tijuana. A veritable city exists in the dump. People had no where to go. They moved to the dump. They scrounged around and found things with which to build simple houses. The last time I was there I was amazed. People (probably women) had done many things to make those shacks in the dump livable. I saw curtains of a type on the windows. People trying to plant flowers. I wondered how many people were electrocuted climbing up utility poles to tap into the electrical grid so that their house could have some electrical appliances.
It’s a dump. It’s a terrible place to live. The human spirit of the people was amazing. They made the best of what they had.
I didn’t grow up in an upper middle class enclave. I grew up in a small town where all social classes (OK, we didn’t have many of them) mingled. I hung out with “rednecks” as an adolescent. Guys that drank cheap beer and worked on cars. They could do mechanical things that few today can do. Sort of the spirit of the old blacksmiths who build all manner of things for people.
The spirit to build and create is human. We can organize a macro economy any way we want. We’ll still have people figuring out things to do to help people and figuring out ways to do it.
Educating today’s young people both in essential skills required by modern manufacturing as well as on the careers available to them has become a strategic theme for technology suppliers and for manufacturers alike.
Phoenix Contact, a global technology supplier with US offices in Middletown, PA, has announced a partnership with a local community college to achieve just that.
HACC, Central Pennsylvania’s Community College, has become the first American school to join Phoenix Contact’s EduNet program. EduNet is an international education network that brings together schools and industry in the field of automation technology.
Phoenix Contact and HACC officials announced the partnership Oct. 5, 2015, during the dedication of a new automation lab at HACC’s Midtown Trade and Technology Center in Harrisburg. Phoenix Contact’s contributions through the EduNet program include donating equipment for the lab. This gives students hands-on access to several Phoenix Contact ILC controller and PROFINET starter kits, the same type of equipment they might use once they graduate and work on the manufacturing floor.
Instructors will also receive a curriculum and free training sessions throughout the year. This includes the opportunity to travel internationally to attend a conference where they can network and exchange knowledge with EduNet teachers from other countries. Registration for the conference is free, courtesy of Phoenix Contact GmbH & Co. KG, of Blomberg, Germany, while Phoenix Contact USA will help cover the cost of travel.
Phoenix Contact and HACC previously collaborated on other science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education initiatives. Most prominently, they designed and implemented a Mechatronics Apprenticeship program in 2011. Over a four-year period, apprentices simultaneously work at Phoenix Contact while pursuing an associate degree in mechatronics at HACC, at no cost to the apprentice.
In 2013, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Apprenticeship and Training Council and the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Apprenticeship recognized Phoenix Contact as an official apprenticeship and training sponsor and the first in the state to offer a mechatronics apprenticeship program. This means the program is available to any company that wants to start its own mechatronics program using the Phoenix Contact/HACC program as a model.
“As Central Pennsylvania looks to increase manufacturing jobs, STEM education is the keystone to developing a workforce with the skills to fill these jobs,” said Jack Nehlig, president of Phoenix Contact USA. “Our mechatronics partnership with HACC is a great example of STEM in action. To date, six students have graduated, and we have two more currently enrolled. We hope HACC is the first of many American colleges and universities who take advantage of the learning and networking opportunities EduNet can provide.”
Pictured in the group photo are (from left to right):
Patricia Marrero, Director of Organizational Leadership, Phoenix Contact Services; Jack Nehlig, President of Phoenix Contact USA; Daniel Koprowski, Mechatronics Technician Apprentice; Irvin Clark Ed.D., Vice President, HACC’s Harrisburg Campus; Tom Lepp, Instructor, mechatronics and electronics, HACC faculty member; David Skelton, Vice President. Phoenix Contact Development and Manufacturing; Jerry Wise, Technical Training Specialist, Phoenix Contact Services; Marian Roldan, Vice President Human Resources, Phoenix Contact Services; and Sheila Ciotti, Campus Associate Dean, Academic Affairs, HACC.
People keep grabbing headlines, and probably clicks, with scare stories projecting the end of life as we know it because the robots (and automation) are coming to take away all the jobs.
I have written on this topic a few times:
This is an important topic–but not for idle speculation.
I believe people were made to work. It is in our nature. I understand that people exist who retired early, play a little golf, sit around, maybe attend a committee meeting a month. Given reasonably good health, sitting around is something I cannot fathom.
And you need money to live. We may be living in the first society where people have been guaranteed an income through pensions (distinct from savings) and can afford not to work.
It is the urge to be useful, the urge to create, and the urge to feed our families and ourselves that keeps most of us going.
Hence the fear that robots and automation will take all the jobs and most people will be left in poverty.
The people who really do need to pay attention to these trends are those creative types at the forefront of technology. They are creating robots that help people. This product development effort recognizes a key demographic trend–that the population of the US and Western Europe (probably also China) is increasingly aged.
We are facing a shortage of workers in the future, not a surplus. People such as Rodney Brooks and his Baxter robot are forging a new frontier in human assistants. Even in the industrial side ABB and Fanuc (among others I’m sure) are unveiling “cooperative” robots who can work side-by-side with humans no cages required to accomplish work.
Recently Moira Gunn of Tech Nation NPR show and podcast interviewed New York Times journalist John Markoff about his book “Machines of Loving Grace.”
So often New York Times journalists get technology and manufacturing wrong. I have not read the book (yet), but Markoff takes a balanced and reasonable approach in his interview. He’s not trying to make money scaring people. He is actually explaining what is really coming.
We’ll have people. We’ll have robots. We’ll have jobs to do and problems to solve. Life will go on.
