Lower the Skills Gap in Manufacturing Through Technology
Innovation is an ongoing process and technology has made huge leaps in just the last 20 years because of that. Knowing how far technology has come and how simple it can be, why has nothing been done in the manufacturing space to lower the skills gap?
Quality Digest says that we are “in the age of high-definition video games, social networking, and phones that have more capability than your five-year-old laptop”. As technology advances, it is also becoming more user friendly, meaning less training is necessary to understand how to properly operate the technological tools used at our disposal. However, despite technology being more operable and providing a chance to lower the skills gap; the same level of training that has always been required, is still needed to get a manufacturing job.
Tom Kelly, guest expert on DisruptED and Executive Director & CEO of Automation Alley, where you’ll find the World Economic Forum’s US Centre for Advanced Manufacturing, feels that manufactures can lower the skills gap and make manufacturing more fun.
Tom’s Thoughts
“The manufacturers today, and that tends to be my… occurring in all industries, Industries, built business models around technology as it existed over the last 20 years. And so, you require lots of education to understand and digest that technology and that’s the skills gap that we talk about.
Well wake up everybody, because today technology, is easy to understand. If you take a person that says, well, I don’t know how to run a CNC machine, but I can navigate a cell phone and play all kinds of video games and I can do everything, I can… really complex. Shame on the manufacturers for not getting together and say, listen, we gotta make manufacturing fun.
We gotta make it so that I can plop somebody in a VR environment and play a game around. Program, a CNC machine and say, look, if you figure out how to make a key and that key in your virtual world can unlock this door, that door leads to $5,000 and a job with us. Kids would be playing that all day long.”
Click here to view the full DisruptED episode and article.
Latest
The Stats Say Alcohol Intake is Down, but the Demand for Flavor is Not. Can the Mocktail Movement Meet Consumer’s Alcohol-Free Needs?
The holiday months are filled with indulgent food and drink, spurring the “Dry January” event, which has become a movement many partake in with the dawning of the New Year. In 2021, NIelsonIQ found that 22 percent of U.S. consumers stated they were decreasing their alcohol intake, and non-alcoholic beverage sales were up 19 […]
Healthcare Cyberattacks Grew in 2022
Concerning data from cybersecurity firm Check Point indicates an increase in cyberattacks on healthcare organizations by 74% in 2022 from the previous year. Healthcare is currently the third most attacked global industry (1,463 attacks per week) behind government/military (1,661 attacks per week) and education/research (2,314 attacks per week.) And in the United States, Healthcare […]
Top Trends at CES 2023 from Bosch, John Deere, and More
Top notch technology and top notch attendance secured CES 2023 its gold medal; to put it simply, this year’s CES was a huge success. The world’s largest and most prominent consumer electronics and technology exhibition, CES served its usual role as a testing ground for ground-breaking innovations across multiple verticals. From 5G to Web3, and […]
