Right now I am 27 years old, but let me take you back to 2001. As a preteen, I was suddenly torn between playing football with my friends and staying inside playing video games.
I never had to learn how to drive stick shift, I have no idea what a carburetor does and there’s no way I could fix a lawnmower. Let’s face it. For the most part, my generation doesn’t have much technical aptitude; we’re not mechanically inclined or used to working with our hands.
At the same time, manufacturing companies with aging workforces are terrified of the future, wondering how they will replace employees as they retire. But I don’t believe we should be scared at all, as long as we do a few things differently:
■ Promote manufacturing in a more accurate and exciting light.
■ Utilize, develop and build on the strengths of millennials.
■ Encourage manufacturing as an alternative to college.
Time to adapt
The landscape of U.S. manufacturing has changed rapidly since the early 20th century. For the most part, the days of low ceilings and poorly lit, unclean work environments is being replaced by sophisticated machinery, robotics, LED lighting and highly automated conveyor systems.
As an industry, we need to promote the reality: Manufacturing today “isn’t your grandfather’s manufacturing.”
The numbers show that as a country, we’ve lost manufacturing jobs overseas because we simply cannot produce things cheap enough. We probably won’t ever be a low-cost producer again. But where we can differentiate ourselves is through design and innovation.
It was our creativity and ingenuity that made us an economic force and somewhere we lost that. We shouldn’t be asking ourselves “How can we make this product cheaper?” but “How can we make this product better?” And that will appeal to millennials.
Open your doors
So what can we do? Give a talk at a local high school sharing your business story and the challenges you and your industry face. Offer to have students take a field trip to see production in action. Talk to students about the problems that will need to be solved and what types of skill sets will be needed.
We can’t just tell students that as a country, we need more engineers. We need to show them. We also need to reinforce and be comfortable with the statement: “It’s OK not go to college.”
There are alternatives where you can earn a good living wage without straddling yourself with debt. There are many intelligent individuals that struggle with traditional high school learning and test taking. They are more visual learners and tend to be mechanically inclined.
Careers such as a machinist, a tool & die maker or a welder are critical jobs that can be very lucrative due to their high demand and students have the ability to earn a great wage right out of high school.
If we are going to revitalize the manufacturing in this country, it will start with millennials. Promoted properly, manufacturing will resonate with my generation and will ignite the creativity and ingenuity that we all share. ●
Brian Blaushild is president at Heating & Cooling Products.
