Manufacturing companies and industry organizations are aggressively searching for young talent, with schools and businesses coming together to showcase advanced technologies and provide opportunities for hands-on work experience.
Tustin-based nonprofit organization Vital Link this month led more than 180 high school and middle school students to visit five separate sites, including one business facility and four local community colleges that have manufacturing departments.
“They had the opportunity to visit the community college and see their departments and all the equipment,” said Kathy Johnson, chief executive of Vital Link, which aims to serve as an intermediary between education and business in the manufacturing industry.
Johnson said the schools—Santa Ana College, Saddleback College, Orange Coast College and Fullerton College—have been upgrading their manufacturing departments with advanced equipment, “so a lot of the students were amazed at how sophisticated the programs were. It helped change their perspective of where they wanted to go to school. They had not viewed community colleges as having that level of technology.”
Vital Link also took students to Cypress, where Sandvik Coromant—a metalworking tools maker and subsidiary of Sweden-based engineering group Sandvik AB—operates a training center. It opened a “productivity center” in Orange County in 2012 as part of its network of more than 25 centers worldwide.
Sandvik Coromant’s entry into OC two years ago was followed by several other manufacturing companies that opened or expanded facilities here (see related story on page 22).
Orange County’s manufacturing sector has grown by about 2% in the past year or so to about 194,000 jobs, according to industry research firm and publisher Manufacturers’ News Inc. (see graphic on page 24).
Nationwide, the sector’s growth; the trend of bringing offshore work back to the U.S.; and subsequent availability of jobs in line with the economic recovery have largely been met with a lack of highly skilled talent, according to reports by the Manufacturing Institute, part of the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington, D.C. Challenges around the skills gap have led to various initiatives across the U.S., including Manufacturing Day, an annual campaign that began in 2012.
Vital Link’s recent series of trips was part of the nationwide event, which was promoted in Southern California through Torrance-based nonprofit California Manufacturing Technology Consulting, or CMTC.
“This is the third year for us doing it,” said Ellen McKewen, a spokesperson for CMTC, which works with manufacturers in 17 counties in California ranging from Fresno and Merced to San Diego. It marketed the event with the theme of “how to attract Millennials and preserve the future of manufacturing.”
“That’s the focus this year,” McKewen said. “The big push is of course to get the younger generation involved. We have a lot of experienced workers leaving the workforce. Because of the transition going on in manufacturing, there has to be new skilled workers to replace them. The only way to do that is to get the high schools and community colleges involved. There are a lot of kids who aren’t going to college but are tech-savvy; they grew up in the tech world. And manufacturing is moving in that direction—high-tech, laser, robotics. We will be focusing on that more going forward.”
A handful of other companies in Orange County participated in Manufacturing Day, including Mission Viejo-based plastic fabricator Planet Plexi and Benavente Inc., a sheet metal manufacturer in Santa Ana.
Irvine-based 3-D printing company Purple Platypus also opened its doors and hosted about 80 visitors.
Spokesperson Deanna Sciarra said the crowd included youngsters ranging from 7 year olds to college students, as well as industry professionals.
Purple Platypus is a distributor for the Stratasys brand of 3-D printers. The fast-growing company had recent annual revenue of about $6 million. It was ranked No. 10 in 2011 as part of the Business Journal’s fastest-growing private companies list, with a 390% revenue jump between mid-2009 and mid-2011.
Sciarra said Purple Platypus sees a need to “bring light to manufacturing here in America.”
“We need to bring more focus to the industry, educate the community more about how manufacturing is different today than it was 20 years ago,” she said. “If we’re not encouraging kids to go into STEM [science, technology, engineering and math], then where are all these manufacturing jobs going to go? There’s a ton of manufacturing happening here. It’s a career that needs to grow.”
The sentiment is shared across the board, regardless of company size and geographic reach, including by Sandvik Coromant, which has 8,000 employees in 130 countries.
It sees “an urgent need to generate interest in the up-and-coming generation in the manufacturing industry” and is offering internships or training programs to students and recent college graduates, said Renee Lando, human resources business partner.
Lando, who’s based at the company’s U.S. headquarters in Fair Lawn, N.J., said the company has shifted from a “somewhat narrow” view of the ideal applicant or trainee.
“We made a decision early on that while we work in a technical field, it’s important to have a mixture of mindsets and thinking styles,” she said. “In years past, we were looking for one kind of applicant; if they didn’t come with the machining or mechanical engineering background, then they were considered not suitable. … [Now] with our trainee program, we’ll be interested in identifying talented graduates who have come through with a technical degree—whether in mechanical engineering, logistics, chemical engineering—as long as there is some technical capacity that’s been demonstrated.”
