Phil Biggs covers the automotive industry for NewsTalk 1340 WJRW
August 20, 2012 – 9:30 am ET
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich.– Last week at the Center for Automotive Research Management Briefings there was quite a bit to celebrate – industry sales up 14% from last year, 20 million new U.S. drivers expected on American roads this decade, and no shortage of new technology coming to pave the way for the connected car. However, amidst all this favorable news and the furor about breakthrough personal mobility trends, there are several serious questions facing the automotive industry right now:
Can the restructured global supply chain keep up with the increased volumes and new in-vehicle content? How will the free fall in European markets affect future investments? And is the slowdown in Asia temporary or long-term? All serious matters…
But perhaps the most serious issue of all facing the industry is the lack of workforce readiness. There is a significant problem right now matching the right professionals with current and future hiring requirements as the auto space grows over the next several years. Dave Cole, Chairman Emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research, has signaled his concern about this workforce readiness problem since the middle of last decade. I spoke with Dr. Cole last week and his worry is even greater today – and the problem is only worsened by the growing departure of so many Baby Boomers from the auto space. With senior engineering talent retiring at a faster pace today, there is an ever-widening talent gap facing the industry.
With tens of thousands of professional and factory floor jobs needed and more coming soon, the issues are twofold – one, how can the industry make the auto space appear more sexy to the Echo Boomers and attract new, rising engineering talent, and two, how will much-needed hourly workers get trained fast enough to meet new factory floor requirements?
The answer to attracting more Millennial engineers is to make a direct link and a convincing argument that this is not your grandfather’s automotive industry any longer. The vast amount of content in the vehicle targeted to young new car buyers is a selling point, but automakers and suppliers must connect this trend to the Echo Boomers and make them realize how cool cars are to manufacture as well as to drive.
But the shop floor answers may be tougher. Vehicle assembly lines today require new age skills – laser welding, robotics, systems-software programming, and J-I-T process improvement – and these skills are not being taught anywhere, nor do many of the Echo Boomers care to learn them currently. This not the grimy, dark, sometimes dangerous assembly line work of the 1930’s…this is advanced manufacturing and the need to get workers re-trained to take these plant jobs couldn’t be more urgent.
Speaking to Governor Bill Haslam of Tennessee, he told me that he’s made a direct connection between his community colleges and the OEMs – Volkswagen, Nissan,Toyota, and GM – to identify their technical requirements and enable the courses and local training to begin immediately on the Tennessee campuses or for college credit at the automakers’ facilities.
We must come together in public-private partnerships to solve these workforce problems. Governor Haslam is serving on a bi-partisan, newly-launched National Automotive Caucus with Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan, Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois, and Governor Jay Nixon of Missouri. The Caucus will look at ways to establish a national energy policy, re-tool outdated labor policies but, most importantly, it will address this crucial issue of workforce readiness and re-training at the plant level.
Realizing manufacturing preparedness in the auto space can’t happen soon enough, as technology now moves forward in six-month cycles not two years or longer as it did in past decades. And, as volumes are restored and growing over the next several years, we must be ready to meet the global demand here in the U.S. with American workers to fill these jobs.
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