Stereotyping the stereotypes

Any conversation about training and skills development in the metalworking industry tends to stir up emotions. Pretty soon, people are complaining about the same three things over and over: “Our manufacturing plants are stereotyped as dark, dirty and greasy;” “We can’t get people to consider manufacturing jobs because we’re negatively stereotyped by parents and high-school guidance counselors;” and “There aren’t enough available workers with the right skills.” Frankly, we talk about these things so much and so often that we’re becoming stereotypes: the people who only complain about being stereotyped. It’s time to get over feeling sorry for ourselves and do something about it.

Regarding manufacturing plants, I’ve been in a few that are still dirty and greasy or, at least, poorly lit. For those plants, it’s time to clean up and brighten up. I’ve also been in plants, like the Paul Horn GmbH cutting tool factory in Tübingen, Germany, where you can barely hear or smell anything being manufactured due to high-efficiency ventilation and soundproofing. If you have a plant that is clean and looks great, invite students and other groups to tour it while you talk up manufacturing.

Why can’t we get more people to consider manufacturing jobs? It might have something to do with the number of manufacturing jobs being at a 50-year low, following the massive job losses during the Great Recession. Yes, some manufacturing jobs have come back, but not as many as were lost, and people know that. We have to sell those people—practically on an individual basis—on the idea that the metalworking sector of manufacturing is actually doing pretty well and has available jobs.

Finally, what to do about the shortage of skilled workers? More and more, the answer is not to wait for the local community college to send graduates to your doorstep, but to go out and recruit them while you train your existing workers to upgrade their skills. In one of the articles in a special training section in this issue of CTE, Connecticut Spring & Stamping, Farmington, Conn., describes how it developed an apprenticeship program to increase its workers’ skill levels after the collapse of training programs at local schools left them with few options (page 78). Another article focuses on how the Center for Advanced Manufacturing Puget Sound, Kent, Wash., helps its member-companies share information on how to develop structured on-the-job training programs to help fill the skills gap.

A third article, on the National Institute for Metalworking Skills, includes information on some do-it-yourself industry promotion. Lenoir Community College in Kinston, N.C., which has a NIMS-accredited machining program, tows a mobile industrial training lab to places like motocross races so it can promote machining and get kids interested in studying it.

Is your local machining program not up to snuff? Don’t just complain about it—fix it like Steve Capshaw of VSS Inc., Greenfield, Mass., did. He led a group of 14 area machine shops in a successful effort to reequip the machining program at Franklin County Technical School in Turners Falls, Mass.

Are your local high schools giving short shrift to machining? Go talk to them! The U.S. Cutting Tool Institute is developing a Web site to disseminate information about manufacturing jobs that includes, among other things, downloadable “toolkits” that offer industry members guidelines they can use when talking to students, parents and educators about manufacturing careers.

My favorite comment about metalworking industry stereotypes in this issue comes from James A. Wall, executive director of NIMS: “What people see is more important than what you say, so if you say you’ve got an advanced manufacturing program and people walk in and see a lot of old machines painted gray under poor lighting … well, it doesn’t look good.” In other words, it’s up to us to repair our image—and then tell people about it. CTE