It is a big ugly building surrounded
by a wide berm and a
barbed-wire fence. It has small
windows, and security guards at
all the doors to keep people out.
With that image in mind, is it
any wonder that most young people
don’t aspire to careers in such
hostile-looking facilities?
This observation comes from
Keith Campbell, director of Pennsylvania’s
Industrial Maintenance
Training Center. The IMTC is a cooperative
effort between industry
and government aimed at getting
more trained employees for the
state’s industrial firms. Campbell
is finding out just what kind
of obstacles he must overcome
to fill the pipeline with promising
job candidates. Manufacturing’s
perception problems among the
nation’s youth have been widely
chronicled, so you would think
Campbell could find a lot of companies
eager to put on a good face
for potential new hires in secondary
schools. He floated the
concept of opening plants and
giving tours so school kids could
see what went on inside factory
walls.
The idea went nowhere.
“The answer among manufacturers
was pretty much no,” says
Campbell. A variety of issues,
among them the legal liabilities
involved, conspired to thwart
him.
But a bad image isn’t the only
problem Campbell faces. Compensation
for trained technicians,
field service engineers, and
maintenance personnel hasn’t
kept pace with what’s available
in other areas of the economy.
“Right now, people hauling the
goods around in
trucks can make
about as much
as knowledge
workers who
produce the goods being hauled,”
he says.
Campbell made these comments
at the recent Pack Expo
show, considered the premier
venue for manufacturers of packaging
equipment. If opinions expressed
there are any indication,
compensation and a poor image
aren’t the only problems facing
manufacturers. Another is that
workers who do find industrial
jobs just aren’t being trained to
hit the ground running.
Contrast the situation in the
U.S. with that of Germany. German
manufacturers have no trouble
finding candidates for factory
work. And, contends Elau Inc.’s
John Kowal, German maintenance
technicians get an education that
is more directly useful on the factory
floor than that of degreed
engineers in the U.S. “American
engineers never even see a PLC
or a motion controller in school,”
he says. Kowal should know: He
works for a company that has a
German parent.
Automation technicians in Germany
study for four years while
spending half their time on practical
factory work. The best of these
candidates compete to become
what’s called a mechatronic technician,
a position that is well recognized
in the German manufacturing
industry and which holds a
certain amount of prestige.
Prestige is a foreign concept to
U.S. workers engaged in industrial
work. It is one of the fronts that
will have to be overhauled if factories
are to ever be more than big
ugly buildings to the next generation
of U.S. high-school graduates.
— Leland Teschler, Editor