While nearby schools and business partners are still the best resources for finding and nurturing new talent, there are many local and regional workforce development organizations that can also provide crucial assistance. Some of the most active include Manufacturing USA’s 18 nationwide institutes, including nine supported by the U.S. Dept. of Defense (DoD), and nine supported either by the U.S. Dept of Energy (DoE) or the U.S. Dept of Commerce (DoC).
One of the DoD-supported institutes is Chicago-based Manufacturing times Digital (MxD, mxdusa.org) institute that provides participants with programs in digitalized tools, cybersecurity and workforce expertise (Figure 1). Its largest current initiative is the Curriculum and Pathways Integrating Technology and Learning (CAPITAL) skills development program that has five role-based curriculums and 15 courses taught at MxD’s Learn Virtual Training Center (VTC), which presently has 25,000 enrollees across 35 states. The five curriculums are data annotation, data analytics, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), cybersecurity analyst, and cybersecurity supply chain.
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“These and other workforce programs are crucial because the silver tsunami of retirements is still getting worse. All of the remaining Baby Boomers will be 65 years old and/or retired by 2030, and by 2034, adults over 65 will outnumber youngsters 17-18 and under. This means there’s still not enough talent coming into the pipeline, and we’re still dealing with perception problems that manufacturing is dirty and dark,“ says Angela Accurso, workforce program director at MxD. “The good news is that many young people are technology nativists, and excited about it, so we can show them manufacturing is tech-heavy and not dirty and dark.”
Accurso reports that MxD is also known for its workforce readiness guides, which outline necessary roles, skills and competencies for future work in manufacturing. The original two guides covered cybersecurity and digital manufacturing. However, it just released a guide on producing electrical vehicle (EV) and related battery products.
