‘Factory work’ goes beyond the assembly line
Grand Rapids, MI — Bravo to The Holland Sentinel editors for stating so clearly what the manufacturing community has known since before the economic crash of 2008. The Sunday editorial, “To renew economy, renew manufacturing,” sheds light on a basic tenet of Econ 101: True wealth comes from agriculture, mining and manufacturing. There’s no mention of derivatives, hedge funds or security-backed mortgages.
I’d like to expand upon your statement: “As a nation, Americans don’t seem to value the work of making things. … To many bright young people, manufacturing is an old, slow and messy way to get ahead in life.”
A comment left on your Web site by JDL emphasizes the importance of
changing this mindset: “Will someone with a college degree
willingly sit on a manufacturing line for simple pay?” This reader,
like most Americans, equates manufacturing with unskilled, repetitive
labor. I, like a majority of my colleagues, have a degree in
engineering, and we don’t work on the line.
Employees at my company, Kane Engineering Group Inc., actively engage manufacturers to create new products and reduce the costs here in Michigan. No one is sitting on a line performing the work of robots.
There are many other manufacturing positions that rely on two-year
technical training. Today, manufacturing is high-tech, highly automated
and in need of innovative, problem-solving workers. The Society of
Manufacturing Engineers’ executive director, Mark C. Tomlinson, has
shed light on the reality of modern manufacturing in recent op-eds on
the subject: “Manufacturing in the U.S. has moved far beyond Henry
Ford’s assembly line. … we need to understand that manufacturing is a
process — not just the finished product. … the next time you hear about
manufacturing on the news, don’t limit your thinking to the automotive
industry or the assembly-line process. Instead, ask yourself how
manufacturing professionals have impacted your life and let yourself
dream about problems they will solve for you tomorrow.”
Also from Tomlinson: “Our medical manufacturing professionals created a
camera that locates and dissolves clots in your arteries. Right now,
engineers and scientists are working on alternative energy systems to
heat your house and power your car.”
If we’re ever going to reach General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s goal of 20 percent of our workforce involved in manufacturing, then we need to educate parents, teachers and inspire students of what manufacturing jobs in the 21st century are like.
