
Workers are the Biggest Asset in the Evolving Manufacturing Industry
It’s not your granddad’s factory job anymore.
The instruction manual for a typical CNC mill – the modern equivalent of a lathe that chisels parts from hunks of metal – is 200 pages long. The machine requires one to two years of training to operate, and those qualified to run it earn wages comparable to teachers or many others with bachelor’s degrees. Manufacturing has changed. The shop floors of most American industrial facilities would be unrecognizable to someone working in them only a generation ago. So have many of their jobs, pushing companies to retool their relationships with employees as they compete for a shrinking pool of skilled workers. read more