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Employer Quotes

The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Manufacturing

They are talking about this topic: Workforce Trends & Challenges

 

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The quotes below are about this issue:
Overall, many employers find it difficult to attract quality entry-level applicants; this is particularly true in the areas of welding/fabrication, system automation technology, and machine technology.

Employer Quote Region
"There are very, very few applicants with qualifications left on the planet, it appears. So, as a manufacturer, you're taking unqualified applicants and elevating them to the role that you need, which destroys a lot of your production and your creative components within the company. To me, it's a disaster. Right now, we're really in trouble." Northeast
"I want to speak on behalf of our aerospace association specifically. The requirements are woefully low on our quality program. We do not have a state program out-putting technical skills for running our CMM equipment, for running all of the components within our quality department. So, unfortunately, we have to take the best people from the machinists trade and elevate them out of what they are trained for—because they are the closest fit.

It is the number one element in any of these organizations, ours included. I mean, that is the top of the food chain, and it's an area that you just don't have the skill sets. Again, I say that we're stealing from the trade that is being produced in order to fulfill that. That should be a stand-alone program, in my viewpoint, with specific skills trained for that. I honestly think it couldn't be covered in a single-year program, but you could do a very, very good job of bringing people along that have that element."		 Northeast
"We're seeing some of the same, I guess, feeder program symptoms in our company as far as the mechanics are concerned. We'll train people for three or four years into specialized equipment maintenance and stuff like that, and we end up losing them to the bigger companies that are able to pay higher. We're at—and I'll ask other employers in the room to correct me if I'm wrong—we're at the beginning stages of requiring more of the entry-level than what we typically have. Our company has historically taken production operators that are advanced, and then transitioned them into maintenance mechanics. We're just now, I think, seeing the trend that we're having to go outside because there aren't enough interested production people. And we're raising the bar a little bit. Now we're going to be getting into some of these one-year, two-year type of prerequisite skills that you do need to be a mechanic in our operation." Northeast
"We do have a lack of skilled resources as far as our technical folks go—like hydraulic and pneumatic and high-speed rotating equipment—so precision maintenance is another thing that we're really focusing a lot of internal training on. But finding that outside—that's been a barrier for us. As far as our engineers—process, chemical, and electrical—we've found engineers. But, overall, we're finding that there are not enough skilled folks out there." Northeast
"Speaking to your question about what's our immediate need—our programming people have moved on through the process. And I don't know of a single employer in our day-to-day contact that is not stressed for loss of critical-thinking, analytical-thinking, programming-type people. People that can apply that type of aptitude towards their own specifics." Northeast
"There's been a national shortage of CNC programmers. Maybe it's because programmers come from the machinists and CNC operator tool and die makers. But regionally, statewide, and nationally businesses cannot find enough CNC programmers because they're not trained as a skill set. They're trained as part of a skill set, to be a machinist. As a result of the shortage, the Twin Cities area has developed quite a number of CNC programming consultant companies who are just doing programming. But I think we need to address the issue of supplying the skill set of CNC programmers. Because that's where business does its business mostly, on quoting work and being successful in setting up the machines to match what the quoting time was. And they have to be very productive and skilled. We've talked about this issue statewide and it keeps, I think, being caught up in a group of skill sets that doesn't get enough attention." Northeast
"We've been going around talking to many of the smaller and midsize manufacturers. And what we're hearing from many businesses for welding and fabrication is that supply and demand are not equal for welding. There's more of a demand for welders—specifically entry-level welders. Maybe that shows the skew between folks getting a higher degree and certification, but what we're hearing from many of our businesses in the region is a bigger demand for the entry-level welders." Northeast
"You've got projects coming online, such as us, and I think we're publicly saying, when we open, we're looking at adding a thousand people." Northeast
"We need system automation technology." Northeast
"We've got a lot of cross-over at the mines, which means a lot of those are millwrights do the welding and fabricating and vice versa. So, these are the people we target. So, that's a big category for us. And, within the next five years, 40 percent of our workforce is going to be retiring, and that equates to almost 500 people in this category." Northeast
"We have a tremendous need for CNC operations and programming. We also need tool and die, mechanical design, and drafting technology. It's interesting, we've seen the programs pretty much disappear. We now go to southern Minnesota to find our mechanical drafting programs, to hire right out of college or two-year programs. A CNC program is no longer available anywhere near us. It's in those areas that we're reaching out to try to partner with both businesses and educators to see if we can't get some of those programs back up and running. I'm surprised that hasn't come up." Northeast