Personnel

The Manufacturing Institute announced they will award Danielle Allen with the Women in Manufacturing STEP (Science, Technology, Engineering and Production) Ahead Award. The STEP Ahead Awards honor women who have demonstrated excellence and leadership in their careers and represent all levels of the manufacturing industry, from the factory-floor to the C suite.

Connecticut’s manufacturing future continues to evolve. The dirty, dark and dangerous shop floors of yesterday have increasingly become bright spaces with smart technology. Advanced manufacturing, robotics and the internet of things are more than buzzwords—they’re happening. But with all the advancements on the manufacturing floor comes a corresponding need to improve the approach to developing the workforce necessary to ensure success.

There will be 4.6 million new manufacturing jobs in the United States to fill between 2018 and 2028, according to a report from Deloitte. Unless manufacturers start exploring new strategies, they won’t be able to find enough people qualified to work in their specialized factories.

If not for a high school technical program that introduced Matt Schauer to the manufacturing industry, the 25-year-old might have never ended up at Fredon Corp., operating a machine as big as a room in a house.

In the United States, the universal complaint about recruitment for manufacturing jobs is that there aren’t enough qualified candidates for all the positions that people are working feverishly to fill. So why are recruiters hobbling their own efforts by purposely limiting the candidate pools they’ll even consider?