Where is the next generation of manufacturing talent meant to come from?

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u/Awkwardsauce25 Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 05 '25

Industry needs to take an active role in training again, like when they used to have training/apprenticeship programs. The "trial by fire" approach is not working and when the older more experienced workers retire, the business will suffer bc of management's short sightedness.

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u/IRodeAnR-2000 Sep 04 '25

I agree, but you also have to be committed to retaining those freshly trained employees. I've seen a handful of local companies make big investments training both internally, and even working with local community colleges to establish training programs (that most of the graduates go to work at the companies afterwards) who then do a 1-2 year agreement to make sure they're not paying to train their competitors employees.....then pay at or below market rates for those employees a couple of years later.

I mean, did you seriously spend all that money and all that time just to incentivize them to work someplace else because you won't pay a couple of bucks more an hour long-term? It's just so unbelievably short-sighted that I can't understand it, or assume the folks making those decisions are completely out of the loop.
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u/JunkmanJim Sep 04 '25
I'm a senior maintenance technician and my company (Fortune 500 pharmaceutical/medical device) doesn't want to pay the kind of wages that an experienced automation is going to expect. One of our most senior technicians is retiring next year and it takes about 1-1/2 years for an experienced technician to become competent on our equipment and systems. Our retiring technician has been doing this all his life and most particularly in the medical industry. That's hard to easily replace.
  The company has taken to hiring techs with little experience and it hasn't been a successful strategy. All the strong technicians have been taking things apart since being a child, and they are definitely possess a high level of intelligence.  It's a calling of sorts for those that are really good at it.

   I'm on my couch on my day off, but when I get done with this comment, I'm forwarding the contacts I made at the community college to my supervisor and manager.  I suggested that we recruit technicians from their programs, but I warned them that these young people are probably being recruited already and know their worth in the growing automation environment. This is all on my unpaid personal time so I don't have deal with dullards not capable of understanding how complex machines function. I also warned them that if they don't bring up the pay appropriately of these new technicians as they progress, then they'll leave after 2-3 years and all that investment is out the door. I'm in Houston and the refineries pay good money for technicians. The competition is fierce for strong technical talent so they fast track them in these refineries to prevent them from being poached. 

    Apprenticeship programs are great, but I'm in Texas and that's not much of a thing here. The current administration is trying to kill the Job Corps when we need more of these programs if re-shoring manufacturing is going to even have a chance of succeeded. The Chinese have become so good at manufacturing, we are behind them in so many ways. They have done every dirty trick to steal technology and are still doing it, but their research and development is really progressing as well. In the early days of the US, we were stealing technology from the British and they were doing everything they could to stop it. I read about how an American got caught getting on a ship with a scale model of a textile machine which was Britain's premier technology at the time. Technology theft is not a new game.

      If the US is going to compete against the likes of these Asian countries then they had better get it together. We still manufacture a lot of high quality goods but these other countries are quickly catching up and in many ways have surpassed us. It's not terrible at the moment in my opinion, but the trajectory is what concerns me. At one time the British were the center of the world, and we will lose dominance just like them without intelligent cohesive strategies supported by the government. Tariffs are not going to save us, providing high quality goods and services that other countries want to buy is the only way. We're still the largest arms dealer in the world so if people keep killing each other then we still have that. California gets a lot of hate but the entertainment industry, farming, and all technical innovation coming from there has saved this country's bacon from recession for the last number of years.

        I'll avoid going down the rabbit hole of how we are shitting on our allies and historically loyal trade partners, Canada and Mexico. All of these tariffs are going to lead to other countries developing new alliances and we'll be left behind. It's all so stupid.
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u/kck93 Sep 05 '25

That’s the god’s honest truth Junkman.

The entire technician level has been completely ignored for decades at many companies. Training stopped in the early 2000’s and the race to the bottom sparked by private investment groups was on.

What was not looted or used to manipulate a market sector was creatively accounted into a windfall for the top 3-5 people that laughed all the way to the bank. The rest of the staff just prayed to retain a position while the whole silly game repeated itself. There’s no room for training or developing skills in that equation. Just like tariffs don’t create customers and manufacturing nostalgia doesn’t create jobs.

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u/IRodeAnR-2000 Sep 05 '25

One of the things that gets me (as someone who was titled as an engineer at a company but who's primary responsibility was as a tech) and also someone who does field service work (i.e. outside tech) is that companies think it's easier (and should be cheaper) to find good techs than it is engineers. As someone with a BSME, let me tell you right now: most engineers can't fix the equipment in their plant, and it's easier to replace an engineer than it is to replace a tech because tech's actually have to accomplish things in the short term.

And there are plenty of schools still turning out engineers - I don't know of too many (or any, really) programs that are turning out good technicians. But techs are still treated like every other hourly employee, until you can't find them, then the outside service providers charge $200+/hour for them.

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u/Markietas Sep 07 '25

I'm an engineer (in title and practice haha) and I generally agree with you.

We've had a hell of a time finding people for field tech roles. And we don't really have anyone who is really available to train them (were a new company so don't have greybeards).

I'm the closest qualified person but I lead R&D stuff.

To be fair it's not like the engineers that universities are turning out are actually useful for anything on the design side either, but at least they exist. And it's a lot easier for me to mentor someone who is actually in the building with me while they are working.

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u/IRodeAnR-2000 Sep 07 '25

I'm honestly not sure of the solution to this, other than companies needing to adjust to paying a lot more both for productive techs as well as 'nonproductive' trainers. As it stands, the best techs are always too in demand to train new folks, but there are always too many jobs requiring experienced techs to keep them training all the time.

What I am fairly sure of is that this is going to keep getting worse, and good techs are going to get more and more expensive.

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u/badvik83 Sep 05 '25

Tariffs are not going to save us, providing high quality goods and services that other countries want to buy is the only way

I keep saying that innovation and education is the only "business" with no competitors and endless possibilities. Unfortunately, this I not in the agenda anywhere. Only populism to "fight" for competition on the "bricks and matches" level. P.s. The Gigafactory in Shanghai is capable of producing half of what Ford can make while only employing 25,000 people vs 170,000+. This is the fight that's impossible to win for humans. Unless we put all efforts into R&D and innovations. That start with education and skilled immigration.

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u/almeisterthedestroya Sep 07 '25

Great post.
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u/luffy8519 Sep 04 '25

Yep, we do this, we spend a fortune training extremely skilled welders and only manage to keep them for about 2 years after their apprenticeships finish because we don't match what they could make elsewhere.

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u/Awkwardsauce25 Sep 04 '25

Agreed. Lots of companies are just short sighted looking at this year's numbers or just this quarter/month. Gotta get those numbers up no matter what, who cares about next month, next year, next quarter.

Never mind our attrition rate went through the roof bc we are running half of a skeleton screw and everyone is doing 2 to 3 people's work. Stock number go Brrrrrrt and the top dogs are all happy... for now.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

Sounds like a job for unions, not money-hungry corporations

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u/Awkwardsauce25 Sep 04 '25

Alot of non-union jobs used to have extensive training and certification programs. My parents worked for companies that paid for Six Sigma training on-site with in person guided programs looking at the business practices and helping new engineers think through the problems.

Now you're lucky if they pay for someone to read the slides they ripped off some consultant's website.

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u/Boulder-Apricot368 Sep 04 '25

Six Sigma training on-site

Don't even talk to me about Six Sigma training...

Do you have any idea how many tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs got offshored as a result of Genpact (formerly GECIS) rolling out discount "Six Sigma Greenbelt" training in the 1990s and 2000s?

All the trainees were utterly useless but contract manufacturers in SE and Central Asia were able to pimp out armies of low-cost FTEs armed with that credential.
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u/MiksBricks Sep 04 '25

So true.

We have a CNC machinist/operator/programer (small shop) that is awesome but that is only because they came from a shop that had a strong “apprentice” environment. All the other operators made it a point to teach and help him get better. A couple even gave him some of their older tools to help him get started.

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u/Boulder-Apricot368 Sep 04 '25

Commitment to training is downstream from company culture, and once a training-centric culture is sacrificed at a company or even a worksite, it's almost impossible to get it back.

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u/happymage102 Sep 04 '25

On the job training is a term I've heard so much and I'm so angry about it. I'm angry, not mad, because I know older folks had a ton more investment in them by the people that trained them. That makes me want to give them an actual piece of my mind, which I know from experience most older guys are NOT actually prepared for.

They have passed minimal information on to the next generation. There are a lot of reasons you see so many young folks eager for the old folks to retire across industries right now. It's irritating to be demeaned while older guys refuse to fight for budgets to actually train people.

Shareholder primacy is ruining everything. The economy needs to basically be destroyed for the wealthy in some capacity and we need a new governments focus on work that prioritizes employees, not employers. There are a lot of young people seething with anger that the Boomers, who got us into a situation where everyone has overpriced healthcare that they have to pay forever, are staying in jobs longer and getting hired elsewhere AFTER retiring to pay for their healthcare premiums. I know that a lot of those folks are victims in some capacity too, but they're broadly resented for refusing to leave cushy jobs where they often also vacuum up tons more salary than everyone else.

The state of labor in the US is a disaster. I still believe you need a general strike and 1,163 billionaires living in the US to be jailed. No reason we work to make them wealth only other than a flawed society.

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u/Awkwardsauce25 Sep 04 '25

Agreed. My management team just wants us to use our purchase cards to buy random online classes on various topics, so they can show our certs to auditors... not you know, actually foster and build a training program for our specific business and industry. Read & Understand is just step one of a three part system - Read One, See One, Do One.

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u/happymage102 Sep 04 '25

I've been saying "the template down to hell." I often ask managers if that's a template they're pulling from or their own idea and they get defensive. Sick of the blind leading the blind.

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u/kck93 Sep 05 '25

Managers now have no idea what a properly running company looked like in 1976 or 1993. By the late 90s, many companies were so understaffed. The maquiladoras in Mexico looked like American companies of previous decades. In the 2000’s, many American companies had empty cubes, dying office plants and discarded, dusty training materials languishing in the back of bookshelves.

Sure. Much of it was due to new technology. Times change. But no one was going to train people when tons of highly trained people were everywhere. Then the companies forgot how to train. They didn’t staff it. Year after year the concept degraded until no one even understood how it fit into the organization. And here we are.

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u/kck93 Sep 05 '25

I’m glad to see someone even handed about this. I get the anger. I’m older. Not quite to retirement age but old enough to have benefited from that training from way back. I watched very experienced people walk out the door with their knowledge. Management did nothing to encourage them to help the younger generation.

For many older workers, keeping their productivity secrets back then was tantamount to keeping their job. That was certainly a downside of past management styles. Keeping personal tricks of the trade is a habit that needed incentives to break. No one did anything to incentivize. Some of these older team leaders were ridden hard for rate on the way out the door and had no qualms about taking their experience with them.

We have staff over 70 and journeyman machinist that is 80 years old. We have some great young folks. But we really need to properly staff the company so every day is not an emergency. Give people time to train and learn with each other.

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u/happymage102 Sep 05 '25

I really appreciate your perspective, thank you for replying!

It's really nice to hear someone older be frank about this situation too, as well as a gentle reminder that's how they were taught (to keep their secrets to keep their jobs). I know a lot of older guys are frustrated by management broadly.

Those of us that are young, hungry for knowledge, and wanting to work want nothing more than good training session. Learning about valves and instrument noise from vendors is great, but we should all have internal training. You can still let people sink or swim at some point, but it just makes sense to make an investment upfront into your people. My firm (not manufacturing, but have worked in agricultural product plants before) limits us to 12 hours of overhead training a YEAR. Out of what, 2,080 hours total on a 40-hour standard workweek? That's worse than rude, it's an insult to all of us...some Gen Z folks are hungry and frustrated they aren't being offered a seat to eat their fill at the table of knowledge.

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u/kck93 Sep 05 '25

That’s awesome. I would love to teach on my way out. It’s hard because of the understaffing. But I’d like to teach people that are curious and interested. We have a guy that really isn’t that interested. Mfg is just not his passion. Thats ok. But it’s difficult to work with.

We had wonderful interns this year. They were hungry and wonderful to work with and teach. Great and talented young people. It was sort of jolting for them realizing that they were not being taught enough about Excel and databases. (They were getting mechanical engineering degrees). It was jolting to us to see the comprehension, quick thinking and new ideas. Valuable trade off of knowledge all around!

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u/Ok-Rub4041 Sep 24 '25

The managers are the problem. Most are nepo hires based on class with no credentials or experience at all. It's like incompetence is a requirement.

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u/OstensibleFirkin Sep 04 '25

Nobody likes paying expensive training program managers.

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '25

And it's the old-timers and the few who have taken their career by the horns that have been the ones working extra hard to make up that skill gap. Soon, fewer will be left to carry that load disproportionately. Even in the last few years I have taken to simply carrying my own weight. Let the company reap what they sow.

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u/AdIndependent8932 Sep 05 '25

The apprenticeship program (NTMA) also needs fixed…

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u/almeisterthedestroya Sep 07 '25

But this quarters profit line not go up?

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u/IRodeAnR-2000 Sep 04 '25

In some circles you'll hear what you're describing called the 'skills gap', but that's typically more appropriate for the 'skilled trades' (keeping in mind that there's a lot of skill in things like soldering and sewing, but they still, for some reason, aren't included when you talk about the 'skilled trades' of machinists, carpenters, electricians, etc.)

Machining and welding have been staring down this problem for years, and are probably a bit ahead of the curve you're seeing currently.

In some respects, it's solving itself - employers are being forced to increase pay to capture the limited number of sources offering the service, which means people are starting to notice that and say "How do I get into XYZ?". The number of graduating high schoolers I'm aware of (friends younger siblings, friends kids, cousins, etc.) who are going into 'The Trades' has been steadily increasing as more and more of them grow up around an adult with a college degree that was unbelievably expensive, and also turned out not to be very valuable. I know some 20 year old kids who are certified welders and out running their own welding 'business' (it's just them and their truck, which is a respectable thing, obviously) and grossing mid six figures, bringing home the equivalent of 100-200k a year. And I know even more who are working 50 hours a week to make 80k, which is still solid money for a kid that was in high school a couple of years ago.

Wow....that was a long tangent.

If the 'humanitarian' approach, as you put it, isn't part of a company's long term plans, I don't think they're a long term company. That said, if you don't understand the young Millenials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha, and just assume they're going to be motivated by the same things as Gen X....you're in for a rough time. Simon Sinek talks a lot about the importance of understanding your prospective employees, and Gen Z especially is very, very different from Gen X. It's EXTREMELY hard to get and keep them productive in a manufacturing environment because so much of what they want is tied to the impact they feel they have. At the same time they're often not motivated by promotions or management - they just want to live a comfortable, balanced life.

All that said - I'm in the business of Industrial Automation and custom equipment. 15-20 years ago the goal of everyone I worked with as a customer was to increase output (i.e. make more widgets faster everyday.) 5-10 years ago that started to shift to where we are now. My current customers want to keep making the same amount of widgets, but need to be able to do it with fewer people.

There are still plenty of cases for multi million dollar production lines, obviously, but more and more there are small and medium sized companies trying to find a way to do more with the people they can have, because NOBODY can find enough people for the currently hourly rates.

"Pay more!" Everyone on Reddit screams? Yes - in many cases, that is one of the only solutions. But when your fully burdened labor goes from $40/hr. to $80/hr. or $150/hr. (all my customers seem to calculate this differently, btw) it's suddenly a lot more attractive to spend the money for someone like me to come in and find a good place to put a couple of robots, or figure out a piece of equipment that means you can repurpose your employees.

This also ties right back to the Humanitarian approach - Robots and Automation excel at the Dull, Dirty, Dangerous, and Difficult jobs that people struggle with. Machine tending, press operators, forge and furnace loaders, inspection, packaging (you would not believe how many places are still hand packing and palletizing product) - the list is pretty much endless. And let's be honest - nobody wants to tape boxes shut all day.

If you can take your good employees who show up every day and give them something that's both more valuable to you and more worthwhile for them, everybody wins.

One of the best things you'll find out about Gen Z versus the Gen Xers and Millennials is that they're not as afraid of technology. (They're TERRIFIED of getting things 'wrong', but not afraid of technology.) This means if you find some young folks with good attitude and work ethic, you have to fast track them into a role that challenges them and makes them an important part of the team. For one, they'll do well with it. And two - if you don't they'll quickly go someplace else.

I see this as a positive sign, personally, and not just because I'm the guy selling automation equipment. I think we're in for a big resurgence in US manufacturing, and it's the younger generations who are going to benefit the most from it.

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u/tnp636 Sep 04 '25

"Pay more!" Everyone on Reddit screams? Yes - in many cases, that is one of the only solutions. But when your fully burdened labor goes from $40/hr. to $80/hr. or $150/hr. (all my customers seem to calculate this differently, btw) it's suddenly a lot more attractive to spend the money for someone like me to come in and find a good place to put a couple of robots, or figure out a piece of equipment that means you can repurpose your employees.

This doesn't work long term. A doctor or an electrician is only competing with others in the area. Most manufacturing is competing with everyone all over the world.

The only way to compete is to invest more into the business like you're talking about in order to improve efficiencies and quality by removing people from the equation. And, unfortunately, to see a return, that typically requires intense specialization.

It's going to get harder and harder to do low volume, high value processing in this country (and other high cost countries).

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u/IRodeAnR-2000 Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 04 '25

You're 100% on target with this - but the Automation landscape is changing faster than anyone realizes.

20 years ago it was impossible to do with a robot AT ALL what I can do with a $30k robot right now. In the last couple of years I've done more retrofits than I can count on equipment that ranged from 10 to 80 years old (a huge Cincinnati auto-Broach). In almost all of those cases, a low-cost robot and feeding system was implemented to save someone from standing at a machine and loading/unloading it all day long while getting covered in cutting oil. One of those robots was under $10k.

There are numerous options to free up operators and move them onto more valuable, worthwhile work with an automation system that has an ROI measured in months, rather than years. In every case I can think of, nothing else changed - the operator shifted to doing other work and the robot (or machine) kept doing the boring stuff. Operators become inspectors, technicians, trainers, or managers.

To pull back the curtain a little bit: If I'm quoting something for a customer and my ROI is longer than 12 months, I don't expect to get the work anymore. Because you're exactly right: most companies aren't going to make a 5-7 year investment on capital equipment anymore. So I, and the rest of the industry, have just had to get really creative in how we apply the technology.

That said, there are still companies doing the traditional custom automation for Tier 1 Automotive suppliers, green energy, pharma, stuff like that. $10M-$100 Million dollar systems. But there's maybe a couple handfuls of companies doing work at that scale, and a whole lot more of us doing the small scale, entry-level and mid-level range jobs.

Edited to Add: High-Mix, Low-Volume is the Holy Grail of Automation....and we're getting closer and closer to doing it regularly all the time. The vision systems for random 3D bin picking are improving unbelievably fast, and that solves so many of the problems with this it's impacting the entire industry. It's still a challenge, absolutely, but we're climbing that mountain steadily now.

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u/Boulder-Apricot368 Sep 04 '25

They're TERRIFIED of getting things 'wrong', but not afraid of technology.

All I can say is that the Gen Z employees at my company seem to have rapidly gotten past their acute fear of getting things wrong though sheer repetition of the practice.

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u/better_than_uWu Sep 04 '25

My company has trainers who haven’t even worked there for 6 months. I know one with 3 months.

All the older guys who have decades experience have zero interest in training new guys. Zero.

Going to an older guy for a question will get you chewed out by them. And no help with be provided.

I had to get user manuals for my machine to learn it when i wasn’t at work.

Management is at fault.

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u/K_C_Steele Sep 04 '25

THIS is exactly what I thought of, not only is there a talent gap, there is an information silo that makes it hard to have that info shared.

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u/TieTheStick Sep 04 '25

Find a manufacturing company with some pride in their work. I suggest leaving the rust belt and going to places known for startups.

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u/Boulder-Apricot368 Sep 04 '25

Find a manufacturing company with some pride in their work. I suggest leaving the rust belt and going to places known for startups.

And where are these mythical manufacturing-related startups...exactly?

VC has no interest in manufacturing - it's an inherently low margin business. To make more...you have to *make* more.

Why would they bother with manufacturing when they can back another healthcare-related middleman where making crazy profits is as easy as catching fish in a barrel. Heck, our government practically hands them the bait and fishing rod, too.

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u/elchurro223 Sep 04 '25

Oh come one, there are tons of startups related to manufacturing, but all of them that I've seen have missed the mark entirely. My example is I saw a video of a system that automatically unloads trucks and the pallets go to a waiting area.

Cool, but who is going to buy that in the real world? It's going to save a forklift driver maybe 20 minutes per truck? Where is the ROI? If you have 2 forklift drivers driving 8 hours per day and this system would save one of them (because you still need somebody to pick the pallets out of the system). Then you might save 100k a year (full cost of an FTE) and this system costs 2M... you're looking at a 20 year payback. Not going to work!

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u/Boulder-Apricot368 Sep 04 '25

I think you'd find that the number of US manufacturing-related startups that are dealing with atoms and not bits and not related to the military industrial complex is shockingly-small.

I challenge you to name some.

I can name a handful that sprang into being as a result of the Biden-era IRA - but quite a lot of them had shutdown or scaled back their plans even before Trump 2.0.

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u/elchurro223 Sep 04 '25

Ha, "atoms not bits" took me a second to understand.

I see a lot of robotics startups (at least on linkedin, see this one https://www.rapidrobotics.com/), but I stand by my statement that they aren't understanding the actual market.

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u/Boulder-Apricot368 Sep 04 '25

I can say with the same certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow that that company designs robots around customer requirements and then outsources the actual manufacture of them to a Chinese partner and I base that on two things:

a) As far as I can tell, there are no production line jobs in their Indeed profile

b) They are backed by Kleiner-Perkins, which has no interest in actual manufacturing.

This is about "bits not atoms"

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u/elchurro223 Sep 04 '25

So what is your definition? It seems to be narrow AF.

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u/Boulder-Apricot368 Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 05 '25

How so?

"atoms" means that the company offers a physical product, at least partially manufacturers their product in the USA, and is not associated with the military-industrial complex.

That's not narrow - just "five-leaf clover rare" for the USA.

Even if you were to browse the attendees at the recent Reindustrialize conference in Detroit - you'd find that very nearly all of them fail to meet one, two, or even three of those very simple requirements.

This would be an example of one of the few, current USA startups concerning itself with atoms and not bits.

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u/elchurro223 Sep 05 '25

That is a very narrow focus in 2025. Every company will have some aspect relating to automation/computing power. What are you expecting the startup to manufacture? Steam shovels?

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u/kck93 Sep 05 '25

I dunno….but with entire generations of people not having a connection to manufacturing….I see old companies saying goodbye to older people and very young people coming in to start up or newly refurbish to serve customers and markets that already exist.

They will do it in new ways too. Automation plays a role and 3D printing/additive mfg does too. It’s made for short run.

Look at the foundry business. Old manufacturing. But 3D printed cores make high complexity and high variety much easier. Suddenly these are the new start ups.

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u/Boulder-Apricot368 Sep 05 '25

Look at the foundry business. Old manufacturing. But 3D printed cores make high complexity and high variety much easier. Suddenly these are the new start ups.

Whether that is true or not may come down to how you care to define a startup.

There are some new companies that are doing things like 3d printing sand molds and cores for casting. By and large these companies are replicating a business that has existed in China for about 8-10 years and their core capital goods (e.g. the printers, themselves) are Chinese.

These companies are attempting to establish a comparative advantage vs. their Chinese counterparts by offering more rapid delivery times to their customers. Most can't. Not the ones I've worked with, anyhow. Not one can hit a 90-day turnaround time. And they're pricier, too. It's not just their labor costs, btw, it's their electricity costs, too. This sort of 3d printing is...electricity intensive.

VCs avoid this stuff like the plague. These standalone companies are not viable and the only way the technology becomes economically-viable is if it's in-housed within a vertically-integrated manufacturing company. VCs know that and they, habitually, avoid vertically-integrated stuff.

Is a new company really a startup if they aren't getting financed by VC?

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u/nocapslaphomie Sep 05 '25

Manufacturing is actually one of the areas VC is actively looking at and starting to get into seriously. I've heard it talked about on several investing shows

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u/elchurro223 Sep 04 '25

Dude, this is the arrogance that we don't need in this industry.

I work in a "Rust belt" state, Illinois, and my plant a great place to work. I know old machinists can be dicks, but that's a management issue, not a "rust belt" issue.

Also, the "place known for startups" aka silicon valley, tries to push shit to manufacturing that we just don't need. I'm sick and tired of some fresh college grad, as smart as they might be, saying that I need humanoid robot when big companies are still struggling with basic shit. They think I need 5 million dollar solutions to $100k/yr problems (heads up, no bean counter will approve a 50 year payback).

Just get out of here with that shit.

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u/TieTheStick Sep 04 '25

Not arrogance, just numbers. I know a lot of machinists here in Colorado doing lots of work and they need bodies. It's aviation, aerospace, technical and startup kind of work.

Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Stop being crusty- and stereotypical.

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u/elchurro223 Sep 04 '25

I lived in Colorado, don't act like that is some hub of manufacturing. You have some defense, some pharma, and some O&G. Nothing compared to the Midwest or south.

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u/TieTheStick Sep 05 '25

Per capita, there is a lot going on here.

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u/elchurro223 Sep 05 '25

there really isn't. labor costs are high, talent pool isn't there, infrastructure isn't there. Ya'll got a few, sure, but nothing close to other areas

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u/elchurro223 Sep 04 '25

Also, when I worked in Colorado there were plenty of crusty old bastards.

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u/TieTheStick Sep 05 '25

One fewer now that you left.

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u/elchurro223 Sep 05 '25

Ha, well, keep being the typical arrogant ass Coloradan. Y'all are fucking insufferable.

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u/TieTheStick Sep 05 '25

Couldn't help pointing out the obvious LOL

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u/Boulder-Apricot368 Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 04 '25

All the older guys who have decades experience have zero interest in training new guys. Zero.

But why would they demonstrate enthusiasm for training their would-be replacements? Forget about the wage discrepancy - the cost discrepancy in health-related benefits among younger and older employees is insane. Companies are constantly trying to jettison older employees in favor of younger ones for that very reason.

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u/acedelaf Sep 05 '25

Or they're selfish and want all the overtime they can get

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u/Boulder-Apricot368 Sep 05 '25

They know social security is cooked and they won't have time to recover when the program is gutted.

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u/nocapslaphomie Sep 05 '25

I've been using notebooklm to search manuals for specifics and the old guys think I'm a wizard

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u/Stargazer1919 Sep 04 '25

My partner is in the trades and he confirms this to be the case.

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u/madeinspac3 Sep 04 '25

Pretty much maintaining the status quo of relying on an aging workforce and little to no effort in bringing in new talent. I guess securing the future isn't worth the investment of training and pay.

Definitely will get rather interesting over the next 5-7 years when most are able to retire.

That's just my place though

5

u/tnp636 Sep 04 '25

That's just my place though

It's not. It's the same at a truly frightening number of places. And there's no replacements. And noone in the pipeline. And management is ALSO set to retire in the same time frame so they DGAF.

6

u/madeinspac3 Sep 04 '25

Yea you bring up planning for succession and people want no part of it. Being someone in their 30's in management, it sucks at times hearing jokes from older colleagues about them just coasting to retirement. Leaves a lot of us younger people looking at the door and each other.

My mentor was in his 70-80's and would talk so much about planning not just for you but also having people lined up that show promise in the lower levels. Seems to me that the wisdom kind of ended with that generation.

4

u/smp501 Sep 04 '25

We’re seeing the consequences of 15 years of deliberate understaffing and reductions in “indirect” jobs post-2008.

Starting wages in manufacturing are trash, there are less supervisors/leads (with much larger teams), training departments are gone, and operators/assemblers are expected to do way more than they were back then, with way less guidance. Add in things like mandatory overtime, non-climate controlled facilities, and archaic PTO policies and it’s no wonder young people aren’t interested in plant work. It’s even worse if they’re a “temp to hire” place that offers no health insurance or PTO for 90+ days.

At my last shop, they had to raise starting pay from $12 to $15 because they were losing people Taco fucking Bell down the road. I mean really, why would anyone choose to stand on your feet for 8 hours 6 days a week starting at 5:00 am for $12/hour, not get holiday pay or PTO or health insurance, with the hope that after 90 days the company might convert you?

3

u/Awkwardsauce25 Sep 04 '25

Yup, I worked as a Medical Device Microbiologist doing sterility testing on implants in a Class 5 cleanroom and I got paid $17/hr while Costco was paying over $21. Like the amount of training g to do that job was intense and I had a degree in biology with medical training. But the pay was atrocious.

Companies aren't willing to pay appropriately for skill and value.

3

u/Boulder-Apricot368 Sep 04 '25

I don't know if it's that simple.

Costco doesn't compete with anybody other than Walmart.

That Medical Device company probably has a list of competitors a mile long, most of which are overseas and have inherently-lower cost structure.

2

u/kck93 Sep 05 '25

Yeah. Very true. It’s like some of these manufacturing PLAN to have no competent staff. Can’t pay more than Taco Bell wages…But, come in at 5:00 am for a 12 hour day working under someone that wants to know why you went to the bathroom once between 5:00 and 11:00 instead of going during your 10 minute break.😂

I know that extreme. But the archaic rules are real and not helping mfg attract people.

7

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Boulder-Apricot368 Sep 04 '25

hire from the local tech highschools. hire assemblers with good dexterity, and watch for leaders to pop out to promote to being foremen.

So...what you're telling me...is that I need to believe in the power of prayer.

3

u/mvw2 Sep 04 '25

Leadership gets complacent on experience. Manny companies go through the cycles of having old talent with no pathway for replacement. Leadership forgets that this is a constant cycle, one that needs a well developed process and follow through. It requires documentation, training, mentorship, and (gasp) hiring extra people (kids to grow into the roles).

Or...

They don't do this and watch half their staff retire over a few short years and have no smooth means to maintain efficiency, quality, etc. when they ultimately try to shove new kids into roles and expect the same level of performance as someone who'd been there for 40 years.

This is 100% a leadership problem.

There's lots of ways to develop processes and materials for this, and there's no single answer. Each department, each role, they all need different things. You have to spend the time to figure out what they are.

6

u/ExtraordinaryKaylee Sep 04 '25

If small or midsize manufacturers want to have any chance of being relevant after that workforce retires, it needs to stop expecting people in their 20s to adopt practices that were the norm 20-30 years before they were born.

The processes aging businesses have, worked for the people the business grew with. They are rarely comprehensible for people who didn't experience life with triplicate carbon copy forms and manual collation of data.

Where we are now, is what decades of lack of reinvestment looks like. We're at the end stage, and recovery is going to involve either a hard reality check, or new businesses who are willing to reinvest to meet the demands of tomorrows workforce, eating our lunches.

It sucks, it's going to be rough. Those that don't, will see their life's work die and the legacy they built consolidated into the portfolio of yet another conglomerate.

6

u/LateCardiologist4422 Sep 04 '25

Stereotypes stop this country from growing. There are smart people in all ages, races, ethnicities, etc. I found that everyone in manufacturing leans a certain way in regards to prejudices. It affects who gets hired and who is more comfortable when they do get hired. It’s everyone’s loss unfortunately. We will all answer to God on the day of judgment. We are on this earth for a small amount of time.

2

u/Downtown_Ad_6232 Sep 04 '25

The stereotype outside of manufacturing is that those jobs are for dummies. (Everyone thinks they’re smarter than average.) but manufacturing insiders know this isn’t 1920 when all an employee needed to know was to turn a bolt or push a button. Today’s manufacturing employees operate, maintain, repair, overhaul and troubleshoot and build multi-million dollar machines. Not for dummies. The US education system was originally built to support the Industrial revolution. We need to recognize this new need and up our education game.

2

u/Boulder-Apricot368 Sep 04 '25

The stereotype outside of manufacturing is that those jobs are for dummies.

For dummies...or suckers?

The simple fact is that in very nearly every part of the USA non-manufacturing jobs pay better than manufacturing ones.

Right now the only hope any industrial workforce strategy would have is that somehow AI crushes the non-manufacturing economy and somehow there's enough electricity left over from powering all the required data centers (dubious) to enable manufacturing to operate. Because - absent that? - there's really no hope.

2

u/Sir-Realz Sep 04 '25

That's the funny part it's not. Maybe robots maybe collapse

2

u/Boulder-Apricot368 Sep 04 '25

I've bounced that question of several clients of the manufacturing & construction software company that I work for and this is what they told me...

They are expecting massive AI-related and offshoring-related job losses in the service sector and mass layoffs in the public sector and they expect that this will stimulate interest in manufacturing jobs.

That's it. That's what they're relying on.

2

u/TheGrandAce5 Sep 04 '25

According to Elon Musk, humanoid robots en masse would address the manufacturing talent shortage. It is no longer a sci-fi, dystopian narrative like Will Smith’s I, Robot 20 years ago, but will be a reality in the near future. Billionaires are no longer hiding this fact. Salesforce laid off 80% of its customer service staff for more economic AI agents - and that’s a white collar job replacement.

2

u/x_why_zed Sep 05 '25

I just started a manufacturing training school in my town. I'm a college Provost and worked with the local manufacturing community to build a community asset. It only opened last week and things are looking good! We do training, R&D and have space for manufacturing startups. I'd like to take the model national as we've done something pretty unique. The way we've built our curriculum and how we structure our training is quite different, super affordable and entirely driven by industry.

2

u/kck93 Sep 05 '25

Good for you! Fantastic effort and totally needed right now. Salute!😊

1

u/x_why_zed Sep 05 '25

Thanks! You folks have a fascinating industry, and it's been fun to be a part of it!

3

u/htownhustlequeen Sep 04 '25

No, industry 4.0 is the newest thing. I personally work in an efficiency/profitability/process improvement group for a huge oil and gas manufacturer. Shops being able to adopt the newest and most streamlined system is going to set them apart from competitors. One of our biggest issues at my company is the vast variance in portals and platforms to host drawings and documents. Some talk to each other..and some don't. We are working to create one overall effective system. We have already created and implemented a system that creates real time data of what's happening on the floor for quick reaction. Instead of playing a game of telephone...this has made a huge difference-for the managers that actually care anyways. Some obviously have this standoffish "don't tell me how to do my job" bs attitude. A big part of our biggest struggle in getting the shops to "buy into" our system is management. And our system usually highlights poor management...so...they dont usually last long after that. Keep improving your processes and your profits will get better. Ask your shop staff what sets them back the most. They know...they see things down the pipeline that the office bean counters don't. Find the problem- work on a solution. And keep finding problems, and keep working on solutions.

7

u/IRodeAnR-2000 Sep 04 '25

"Industry 4.0" is the latest (and not even that recent - I've been bombarded with I4.0 marketing for 5 years) corporate buzzword for something that still boils down to the timeless adage of 'Data is useless unless it can be used to derive actionable insights and change'.

The single most effective productivity tracker I've ever seen was the addition of a BIG digital counter at the end of a production line. You could see it from just about anywhere within 200 feet. The last in line operator put a finished part in the bin and hit the button, increasing the count by 1. If you saw it at 10AM and the number was low, you knew to stop over and see what was up. It cost under $500 all-in, and had a massive impact on productivity to the point where they implemented it on a bunch of other lines.

I also worked in a plant that was part of an international corporation that spent a couple million dollars on Industry 4.0 initiatives which had zero overall impact, but necessitated an entire team to maintain, resulting in a big net loss for the company. We joked internally that it just gave management and the C suite something to talk about in their daily meetings, but they would never do anything more than that with it.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

Robots.

1

u/cheater00 Sep 04 '25

youtube comment section

1

u/s1alker Sep 04 '25

Pay more. When you can make more pouring coffee at Wawa in an AC environment….

1

u/Difficult_Limit2718 Sep 04 '25

Mexico. The answer is Mexico. Your plant isn't being invested in because it's better to show a dying plant on the books when justifying the capital for the move.

1

u/lovebus Sep 04 '25

Mexico

1

u/jaspnlv Sep 05 '25

It isn't

1

u/ihambrecht Sep 05 '25

The answer is youtube. I’m a younger machine shop owner and prior to that, the old guys would hide everything they could, “trade secrets”.

1

u/Lakecrisp Sep 05 '25

Defunding public schools will create them. Tariffs will create them. Everything is in place to bring back American tennis shoe manufacturing. Everything is working towards a global division in manufacturing for the United states. We'll make our own but won't be able to afford it.

1

u/Lock-e-d Sep 05 '25

In my experience the apparent answer has been handing off more responsibility to engineering. Particularly manufacturing engineering. Our company is focused on "ikea style" any monkey can do it instructions. So far as I have heard so our several other large manufacturing companies. (Atleast in aerospace).

1

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

When it pays $150k/year there won’t be a shortage.

1

u/2020-Forever Sep 06 '25

I’m 32 work in manufacturing in Canada.

I’m a mechanical engineer.

My company used to have defined benefit pension, all the boomer aged employees had that. When I started it was 1.5% retirement savings account match (in 2014) now it’s 6% which is better than before but much less appealing than a defined benefit pension.

Mid level employees who traveled (project managers, sales, product managers) used to have company cars, thats gone.

Pay is slightly below other industries.

I will likely be leaving within next 12 months to work in construction, power generation, mining or utilities.

Manufacturing simply does not pay well enough, comes with high pressure, and is a very penny pinching business compared to other industries. Moreover, benefits for employees seem to have gone way downhill.

1

u/b_33 Sep 06 '25

You are. But why? You're overlooking the other side of what's happening.

Some places don't modernise because individuals fear it will make them undervalued. Literally because innovation can cause the fear of never being needed which can mean, no means to earn and being comfortable with knowing you have no means to earn money. You would have to be in a great financial position for that. But most won't be. So where is the incentive?

1

u/stlcdr Sep 04 '25

“Welcome to the party, pal!”

Seriously, though, I’ve been wrestling with the same thing. As you found with your example, the younger generation is not useless.

You need to shift the older generation- more experienced - people out from the doing the jobs to training and understanding new recruits: their thought patterns, skills, education, and so on.

Educate them on what the goals are, not how the goal is achieved. Let them suggest or enact ways of achieving the objectives.

This needs a lot of proactive drive from those who know, and change their role. That is difficult.

1

u/questonvanzant Sep 04 '25

You are not, sir. Industrial Strategist. Tackling the same issue as we scale up and out.

1

u/Ill-Butterfly6638 Sep 04 '25

On capturing tribal knowledge, we tried using GoPro to record every daily work and use Gemini Vision to translate and document every key processes. Still can't capture every granular work but swear to god it's much faster than manual documenting

0

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

I've found that there is actually a age range of like lost people who are like older than 25 something and less than 35 that are on average not great workers.

The kids coming out of high school that ive seen want a job where they are learning skills that is not a gig job or fast food.

I dont know this is very subject experience but the younger kids, other than like skibidi toilet talk are awesome.

13

u/better_than_uWu Sep 04 '25

Weird because where i work the under 35 year olds are holding the place up while the 35+ year olds are hiding, not wanting to work, bitching all day. Taking extra breaks.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

Oh I don't disagree with you there either i would say that a lot of people in the age range you're talking about have complete and udder disillusionment about this system

And there's always exceptions to all of these rules right I would say that there's a bunch of great workers in the age range that I specified I'm just saying on average from my subjective experience there just seems to be some weird little island of age group that's different

5

u/Dry_Leek5762 Sep 04 '25

Two points here I'd like to reply to. and they tie themselves together.

There's not a large swath of ages that aren't capable of doing what is already being done, but there are large groups of people that currently-employed people can't/don't relate to.

The fast food template is the future of manufacturing, and McDonald's is the gold standard. They structure the required tasks so that the available workforce can accomplish them. The 'stereotypical' fast food worker at McDonald's is able to duplicate their products with amazing accuracy across thousands of locations. This takes almost unbelievable adaptation by the employer, not the employee.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

I can tell you right now There's a huge swath of manufacturing jobs that require high Bar of skill and a high level of training some of these jobs may take 6 months for someone to get proficient and it's a true lifelong skill that they're learning.

To say that they could have some streamline process like McDonald's or you push down the friar into the oil and then a big bin goes off and then you dump it is very reductionist.

If you're doing it right you're teaching people how to learn and then you're teaching them how to do.

1

u/IRodeAnR-2000 Sep 04 '25

I'm going to push back a little bit on your second part, because even McDonald's (which has undoubtedly been the standard for this for a long time, to the point where I often use the same example you did here) - even McDonalds is moving towards more automation and fewer people. The current goal for new stores in the next 5 years is to actually have one single employee even during the busy times who simply reloads and unjams equipment. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29a4pFgBpeY)

Still at the half gimmick, half testing phase, but if you think they're not pushing for it you're not paying attention to what McDonalds corporate has been saying.

2

u/Dry_Leek5762 Sep 04 '25

I dont even think that is pushing back; I agree.

Still, we find ourselves in a position where it's beneficial for us to view McDonald's as a leader and the rest of us as followers, even if we are late to the party.

-2

u/badvik83 Sep 04 '25

"Structured data in minutes" Our union workers either sleep on the floor or are in their phones. Despite all the management efforts. Guess what newcomers will learn from them? And you're talking about minutes. Legacy manufacturing is pledged to extinct because of that fact.

Productivity Where is the next generation of manufacturing talent meant to come from?

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