Farewell Industrial Parks Of Central Mass. | My last column, a couple of notes for the road
So, this is it, folks: The last Industrial Strength column. I’m leaving the Worcester Business Journal, and the column won’t be published after I’m gone.
I started this column while a reporter at the Hartford Business Journal, a sister publication to the WBJ. There, and here in Central Massachusetts, the message was the same: Manufacturing isn’t dead, but it’s changed. There are still a lot of companies here that make some very interesting and important stuff, but in order to survive, they’ve had to make the proper adjustments, some small, some dramatic.
On The Road
I have sincerely enjoyed visiting the manufacturers I’ve featured in this column because many of them share traits that I admire. They are comfortable with, and in many cases embrace, risk, change and uncertainty. They aren’t afraid to point out the shortcomings of the previous generation’s ways. They want to live in a country, in a society, that makes things it can be proud of.
One of the attitudes I’ve encountered from the very beginning is one that assumes manufacturing can’t be considered healthy again until it employs people in numbers comparable to those it employed until a generation or two ago.
I’ve mentioned this on occasion over the past couple of years because I think it’s worth noting that the likelihood of the manufacturing sector employing as many people as it did in the 1950s is nil.
But why would we want such a situation, anyway?
The sector has been trying to reach a balance between productivity and the number of people it employs and too many manufacturers don’t realize they can’t have it both ways.
For better or worse, we’ve left Industrial Revolution-type manufacturing to others. What we have in its place, I think, is better.
I’m from the mill towns of Eastern Connecticut. My family worked in the textile mills there and the greatest desire each generation had was for its children to go to college and get the hell out of the mill.
So, the sector finds itself today in the gap between the lament for the days when manufacturing employed thousands upon thousands, and a sea of potential employees who don’t give the sector any thought because they’ve been steered, overtly or otherwise, away from it.
On one hand, you’ve got companies like Swissturn/USA in Oxford and Lincoln Tool & Machine Corp. in Hudson, both of which I’ve visited, and both of which can run 24/7 almost completely unmanned.
On the other hand, that doesn’t mean there are no jobs in manufacturing. There are jobs available, but they’re more technical and more demanding than they’ve ever been, and a generation’s worth of steering high school kids away from manu- facturing has taken its toll on the labor pool.
Just because manufacturers can run unmanned, or nearly unmanned, doesn’t mean they don’t have employees. However, those employees need to know how today’s cutting-edge, robotic manufacturing systems operate.
By running such fast, efficient machinery, manufacturers have more time to do research, development and prototyping, which is what the bulk of the employees at Lincoln Tool do. It allows the company to offer a wider range of products to a wider range of customers.
But the folks at Lincoln, and at many of the other shops I visited, complain that they have a hard time finding qualified employees.
So, as I sign off here, I want to encourage greater commitment on the part of manufacturers who are perhaps putting less than 100 percent into their efforts to modernize and get lean.
More importantly, I want to encourage parents, teachers, guidance counselors and others to guide young people toward modern manufacturing in much greater numbers.
Modern manufacturing jobs have more in common with engineering than with old-school methods. In fact, young people I’ve met who have committed to careers in manufacturing have also committed to getting degrees in mechanical or electrical engineering. Larger manufacturers in Central Massachusetts, like Metso Automation in Shrewsbury, are so keen to get their hands on these kids that they’ll pay them a decent salary and reimburse their tuition.
Today’s manufacturing jobs are good jobs. They require advanced skills and training, but bright students with the aptitude for these positions won’t fill them unless they know about them. It’s better to get those students into a cooperative training program like the one run by Quinsigamond Community College than it is to put them on track for a liberal arts degree that leaves them in debt and without prospects or focus.
I’d rather see these kids on a factory floor making something they, their town, their state and their country can be proud of.
Editor’s Note: In Industrial Strength’s place we will begin running a regular column focusing on small businesses based in Central Massachusetts. If you own a small business and would like to be profiled, please e-mail cdavis@wbjournal.com.
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