Rehana Begg is editor in chief of Machine Design. She has spent over a decade in the trenches of industrial manufacturing, focusing on new technologies, manufacturing innovation, and business. Traci Purdum is editor in chief of Chemical Processing. Traci is an award-winning business journalist with extensive experience covering manufacturing and management issues. Geert De Lombaerde is editor at large at Endeavor Business Media. He has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for a variety of industries. Andrea Corona is senior editor of Pharma Manufacturing. Andrea is responsible for creation of editorial content, moderating webinars, and co-hosting the "Off script" podcast. Jen White is the director of student engagement at The Manufacturing Institute. Jen leads and manages the national Manufacturing Day event activities and STEM education efforts at the MI. The team recently spoke with IndustryWeek editor in chief Robert Schoenberger about Manufacturing Day, an annual celebration of everything manufacturing that helps to introduce young people to a career in industry.
Below is an excerpt from the podcast:
IW: I'd like to start with you, Jen. Could you tell us a little bit about Manufacturing Day, some of the history, and what you're expecting to see this year?
JW: Yeah, absolutely. We're really excited. We’ve been doing a lot of work for the last several months to really get prepared and get as much involvement in MFG Day as we can. So, a little history. Manufacturing Day, or as we call it, MFG day, was first held in 2012, and it was held on the first Friday in October. And it was really an effort in the Midwest to get students in front of manufacturing to show them what it really looks like. And from there, it's just kind of continued, evolved. And so we're on year 12 now, and The Manufacturing Institute now leads MFG Day. Our goal is really to empower manufacturers and their partners across the country to plan and produce really impactful events for students of all ages. While it started primarily with doing tours of manufacturing facilities, it's really evolved now to be encompassing of many different types of events. I always say there's no one-size-fits-all. You really have to make the event work for the company, the business, the partners, and the target audience especially.
And so while we will celebrate National Manufacturing Day tomorrow, October 4th, which is again the first Friday in October, when we always celebrate it, that doesn't always work for student groups, for schools to do field trips, or even for the company themselves. And so we will see events happening. Some have already started. We'll see them happen all the way through the month of October into November even. And so The Manufacturing Institute has a national registry of events, and our website, mfgday.com, we encourage anyone who is hosting an event to register it through that website so that it appears on that national map. That then allows us to not just show all the great work that's happening across the country, you see all these pins all across the map, but it really allows us to better tell the story, too, of how the manufacturing community really comes together towards this common goal of inspiring the future manufacturing workforce. So tomorrow you're going to see lots of, again, events happening all across the country. Look at social media. We're hoping it's a true social media takeover and encourage everyone to post on their own channels, but we'll see lots of proclamations, press releases, stories in the news, spotlights of manufacturers and what they're doing today.
IW: I'd like to turn things over to Traci because you've been doing a lot of work over in the chemical world, looking at the challenges in preparing that next generation workforce. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
TP: Yeah, we're two articles into a five-part series that we're doing on Workforce Watch just for those items that you mentioned, the skilled workforce that's leaving us, the knowledge that's leaving us. And what we're finding is it’s such a struggle to compete with other industries that are kind of poaching our skilled workforce. Jonathan Katz, our executive editor, in his first article in the series, really illustrated that point by stating that some of these companies are having to reach out to very unskilled labor forces. He mentions they're grabbing folks from Walmart who were stocking shelves one day and then the next day they're dealing with hazardous chemicals, and that is just not the best practice to have. But they're struggling to fill those positions.
You don't get a chemical engineer by accident. You go to school for that. You're pretty highly ambitious. So the tech industry in Silicon Valley are really kind of poaching who our industry looks to. So bigger companies are trying to combat that with programs of their own, incentives, relocation incentives, to get them interested in the companies and the industry. Also diversity aspects. You know BASF has a great program to work with women in manufacturing and really promote them in the industry and hopefully keep them longer in these roles.
What we're also finding too is that the younger workforce wants to just stay for a few years and leave, and that knowledge can never be built up. And so it's just a tough thing all the way around, and automation can maybe help supplement that, but you still need people out there. Operators are no longer just valve turners. They're diagnostic. We're looking at them for other things, too, their knowledge base. So, it's just been a real rough pull in the industry to kind of keep that knowledge, find new talent, and keep them engaged in the workforce.
IW: I'd like to turn things over to Andrea over there in the pharmaceutical world. It seems like that would be an even bigger challenge because you're not looking for unskilled labor at all. Generally, you're talking about a lot of people with very advanced qualifications. So, what is the pharma world doing to try to address some of these challenges?