Bob Trebilcock

Going mobile with worker training
March 18, 2008

When it comes to U.S. manufacturing, much of the news is negative. Who hasn’t heard stories about displaced workers, plant closings and global outsourcing. You may even work for a company in the middle of a manufacturing transformation.

Massachusetts is no different than any other state. It has certainly lost manufacturing jobs and entire industries. At the same time, I recently interviewed Jack Healy and Ted Bauer, two experts on the state of manufacturing in Massachusetts. They suggested a different way to think about what’s happening in their state that may give other regions of the country – or companies like yours – a different way of thinking about competition.

Healy is the director of the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership. With links to the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, MassMEP describes itself as an organization with a culture of innovation that leverages MEP resources in the application of new ideas to clients, products and processes in pursuit of profits. Tranlastion: They help manufacturers, especially small manufacturers, implement lean manufacturing processes that will allow them to make money, even in a global economy.

Bauer is the project coordinator for the Machine Operator Skills Training program (MOST), a program that provides training to people, often from underserved communities, to operate the computer numerically controlled (CNC) machines that run today’s high-tech manufacturing plants. 

First the numbers. Yes, Massachusetts has shed manufacturing jobs, especially in traditional industries. Despite those losses, manufacturing is still the fourth largest industry in the state, employing nearly 300,000 statewide, and accounting for 9% of the total workforce.

Gross sales from manufacturing have actually risen since 2001. More important to Modern’s readers, the dollar value added per employee rose by 32.3% between 2001 and 2005. Translation: Massachusetts’ manufacturers are more productive than ever. 

What has Massachusetts done right?

• First, Massachusetts has a highly educated workforce (56.7% of the manufacturing labor force has some level of college education);

• Second, the state has an entrepreneurial culture (92% of state’s manufacturers are locally owned businesses with fewer than 100 employees);

• Third, Massachusetts’ business understand the value of staying ahead of the curve, investing more than $122 million a year in R&D, especially in biotechnology and medical devices, high technology and alternative energy.

The state still faces challenges going forward: To remain competitive, Massachusetts manufacturers need a workforce with the skills to work in today’s high-tech, computerized manufacturing plants. At the same time, Massachusetts’ demographics are changing: By 2020, 40% of the residents between 20 and 25, prime candidates to enter the job market, will be people of color, many of them foreign-born or coming from under-served communities.

That’s where Healy, Bauer and MassMEP come into play.

Through its Next Generation of Manufacturer initiative, Healy’s colleagues work with small manufacturers in old manufacturing centers to go lean. “Most of the companies in those cities are Tier II manufacturers with a higher group of diverse employees,” says Healy. “We do an assessment of their business. Then we show them where there might be an ROI from lean initiatives. When there’s an opportunity, we can provide them with training and consulting to implement a lean culture.”

Working with the MassDevelopment Corporation, the state’s business development arm, qualified companies can obtain the financing they need to make changes.

Does it work? According to Healy, MassMEP’s clients realized more than $35 million in savings in their businesses last year and created or retained more than 2,000 jobs.

To maintain that momentum, those businesses need a supply of skilled talent. That’s where Bauer’s MOST program comes into play.

MassMEP has outfitted a commercial bus with 12 CNC computer-simulated workstations. The bus travels around the six New England states offering an intensive 10 weeks of training in manufacturing methods. “We put them through 80 hours of basic skills, like shop math and reading plus instructor-led computer simulation on machining processes,” says Bauer. “If they get through phase one, they go on to eight weeks of structured, on-the-job training in a plant.” Workers who get through the whole 10 weeks matriculate with a high-paying manufacturing job. In the last 17 months, MassMEP has trained 372 workers across New England, many from what are diplomatically described as “hard-to-serve populations.” 

These programs aren’t a silver bullet for what ails U.S. manufacturing, but they are an example of what some states and non-profits are doing right to compete today.

 Tell us what your company is doing to meet the challenges facing manufacturers today.

Posted by Bob Trebilcock on March 18, 2008 | Comments (0)