Yes, There is an EXPENSIVE Large Skills Gap in Industrial IT in the U.S., Europe and the World

Hello All, Just got back from teaching in S. Korea the MESA Global Education Program's MES/MOM Methodology Program. This class had 22 YOUNG engineers in the class. Most were between 28 and 32. Most were end users and system integrators. All were seriously studying the MOM standards (ISA-88/95/99/100, SCOR, OAGIS, OPC) to understand how to architect scalable industrial IT architectures. All were applying the best practices in Korea and China plants to create more jobs for their countries by building the next-generation plants. This is a premeditated, pragmatic approach and business model. This approach is completely missing in the United States and most of Europe. I have taught this program for last 16 months around the world. Outside of the U. S. and Canada, I fill up the classes and am regarded as a subject-matter expert. My books and papers are well-known and used.- In dramatic contrast, the MESA GEP events in North America are postponed or canceled half the time, and when they do go, it is with a minimum break-even number. Most who attend in U.S. are over 40 and interested in finding a better way to correct their past mistakes. I am not training the next generation to build next-generation plants in the United States.  ISA posted a survey last year that said that 70% of the automation engineers in North America and Europe will retire in the next five years. Most of the end-user companies that I deal with are outsourcing their automation to Indian firms, who are putting young engineers in American and Europe plants. From my observations and conversations with operations people, this is not working out  The leaders of the end users are not investing in their future knowledge workers, while bringing under-mentored young engineers into their business who are than making expensive mistakes in plant applications--mistakes that were made 20 years ago by most experienced manufacturing systems engineers. I have often explained that MES/MOM applications require four projects and five years of mentoring to understand how not to make the multi-million dollar mistake again and again. So where is there is an hourly cost saving in outsourced resources? There is a much higher cost to not developing internal knowledge of production processes and operations work processes.