The first part of this series on Developing & Engaging the Manufacturing Workforce, a paper by PMMI's Alliance for Innovation & Technical Excellence, looked at the difficulty of locating engineering/technical and production/operations staffing for positions in consumer goods manufacturing. This installment looks at education and training.
“Participants at the workforce engagement session said that our educational system does not teach students how to think,” states the MESG (Manufacturing Excellence Share Group) paper. Children and young adults are not given the tools nor taught the skills to find their way independently through the maze of a problem or a high-level concept. According to MSEG, this deficiency manifests as a lack of decision-making abilities in the workplace.