‘Skills gap’ hits the factory floor

Contrary to certain claims made on the campaign trail this year, U.S. manufacturing is in quite good shape. New data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that manufacturing output has rebounded from a steep dive following the 2008 recession.

And according to Deloitte’s 2016 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index, the U.S. will take over the top ranking by the end of the decade, unseating China, which has topped the chart since the consulting firm created it in 2010. Certainly not every industry has rebounded, nor has every region, but there is demonstrable strength across the board.

At the same time, jobs in manufacturing—and attitudes about them—have changed. Witness the latest run of television ads from General Electric in which the protagonist, a mild-mannered new hire, struggles to communicate the high-tech nature of his job to friends and family.

In an early ad, he is confronted by his father, who, proud to see his son going to work for a “manufacturer,” hands the computer-aided systems designer his grandfather’s immense sledgehammer. In the most recent ad, our hero meets a young man on the street who expresses an interest in working at GE, with the caveat that he needs Mondays off.

Demographic changes are also affecting the workplace, such as the retirement of the baby boom generation and an exodus of young workers from economically stagnant regions of the country. Many of these changes impact basic manufacturing sectors such as chemicals.

In a recent study undertaken with the Manufacturing Institute, Deloitte identifies a “skills gap.” The report estimates that 3.4 million new manufacturing jobs will be created in the U.S. over the next decade but that 2 million of them will go unfilled. The demand will be stoked by the retirement of a huge cohort of experienced workers and, to a lesser extent, growth in the economy.

The failure to fill these jobs, according to Deloitte, will result from an increase in technology in the workplace, changes in public perception of manufacturing careers, and shifts in general work ethic. Although positions for researchers, scientists, and engineers will be left unfilled, Deloitte finds that the most significant gap will occur in plant operations.

The impact will vary regionally. Large chemical companies in major industrial clusters such as eastern Texas, southern Louisiana, and West Virginia’s Kanawha Valley are well-positioned to gear up training in conjunction with local community colleges and technical schools that have worked with the industry for decades. Most schools in these areas offer associate’s degrees in plant operations.

Smaller companies in less industry​​-​intensive areas will continue to struggle with recruitment and training without much backup from local schools and almost no support for training specifically targeting chemical plant operators.

But some firms in rural Georgia and South Chicago are taking steps to build a support system at local colleges, working together and in partnership with the Society of Chemical Manufacturers & Affiliates (SOCMA), a trade association they belong to that primarily serves small and medium-sized fine and specialty chemical producers.

One such company is Optima Chemical, a 26-year-old firm in Douglas, Ga., that purchased two former DuPont plants in West Virginia last year. The new plants illuminate Optima’s human resources dilemma in Georgia, according to its president, Gene Williams.

“There is a distinct difference in the labor force in rural southeast Georgia versus the Kanawha Valley,” Williams says. “The human assets and support for industry are so entrenched along the Kanawha River. There are more experienced chemical operators, contractors, construction companies. Here in Georgia, that’s not the case.”

An hour away in Valdosta, Ga., CJB Industries, a chemical formulation and packaging firm, is struggling with the same constraints. And work ethic is a concern, according to Chief Executive Officer R. Clinton Beeland, who started the company 20 years ago. “Finding people who want to work and have a certain work ethic—who understand that you come to work at a particular time, that you do this work, and that from this work you get paid—is difficult.”

In University Park, Ill., just south of Chicago, Avatar, a manufacturer of food- and pharmaceutical-grade chemicals, is similarly frustrated. Millennials, as CEO Mike Shamie refers to the new generation of job seekers, are a difficult breed for manufacturing firms seeking to fill the jobs of departing skilled workers. “Young applicants have a hard time understanding why they have to come to work on time and be there every day,” he says.

Though largely struggling on their own to hire and train workers, Optima, CJB, Avatar, and other SOCMA members have received support from the association in the form of a basic training curriculum called Chemical Operator Training (COT). Developed in the early 2000s, COT is offered to members free of charge.

COT helps by providing an elementary overview of necessary math, chemistry, and work process skills, according to SOCMA members who use it. But it doesn’t expand resources for smaller companies already strapped for time. Nor does it guarantee quality instruction—companies have to appoint their own staff as instructors. “Being a great chemist or engineer doesn’t make you a great educator,” Optima’s Williams observes.

The experienced educators near Optima, he says, are at Wiregrass Georgia Technical College, which offers an associate’s degree in industrial systems technology but with no emphasis on chemical or batch process operation. Early last year Williams, Beeland, and executives at other nearby firms, including the BASF plant in Sparks, Ga., approached Wiregrass officials to see whether COT might be grafted onto the community college’s curriculum to better prepare potential employees.

The college was receptive. The first community college to purchase the COT curriculum, Wiregrass is currently preparing a pilot course in plant operations that incorporates the SOCMA program. Meanwhile, at the urging of Avatar and Opportunity, Advancement & Innovation in Workforce Development (OAI), a Chicago-based nonprofit training agency, SOCMA has inked a similar deal with Prairie State College in Chicago Heights. Prairie State is collaborating with its sister institution, South Suburban College, on a training program using COT.

Sharing the COT curriculum benefits workforce development in an area such as South Chicago where community colleges are competitive and rarely share resources, says Mollie Dowling, executive director of OAI. She also sees an opportunity for industry and local colleges to improve the profile of the sector.

“Chemical manufacturing wasn’t very sexy before, but it’s gaining momentum,” she says. “There is a lot more automation, more technology. It’s cleaner with more emphasis on safety and health.”

Lawrence D. Sloan, CEO of SOCMA, says the association wants to market COT to other community colleges and job training centers. Adding training specific to the batch chemical industry will “move the needle and train a broader number of people,” Sloan says, than would in-house COT instruction by individual companies.

SOCMA is in talks with the Manufacturing Skill Standards Council (MSSC), a Washington, D.C.-based association that offers a general manufacturing training and certification program called Certified Production Technician (CPT), about combining their curricula. MSSC is already used in about 900 training centers across the country.

A combination makes sense to Lidell Greenway, vice president of economic development at Wiregrass. B. J. Schmidt, training and events coordinator at Prairie State, also likes the teaming of COT and CPT. Both say they are in the early stages of crafting a curriculum combining the two.

They face a number of problems in doing so, however. For one, CPT is a 160-hour course accredited by the American National Standards Institute. It can be offered for college credit, whereas COT, which offers 40 hours of training, is not ANSI-accredited and is thus a noncredit course.

“A person who is applying for an hourly process operator job will not likely pay to sit in a class for 40 hours for no credit,” Wiregrass’s Greenway says. It is also questionable whether employers would pay for potential hires’ training.

And a critical mass of students interested in the program would be needed to make the course worth offering. “We are hoping that business comes from companies like Avatar that say, ‘We have 12 guys who need training. Let’s start a cohort,’ ” Schmidt says.

Sloan says SOCMA is currently gauging interest in COT to assess whether to expand the curriculum to apply for ANSI accreditation and pursue a formal partnership with MSSC. He plans to discuss the program with SOCMA members at a meeting in Chicago next month. Meanwhile, the association is already working with CJB on giving COT instruction specific to chemical formulators.

Optima’s Williams says he and other local company executives have met with the COT instructor at Wiregrass and are coordinating on curriculum planning. He is optimistic a program will emerge that will free up resources at his company and give potential hires a good idea of what chemical manufacturing entails.

CJB’s Beeland sees the potential for a wholly new career path in manufacturing. “There is a challenge and an opportunity for people who are gifted in understanding science and how to teach,” he says. “This may even be a new career opportunity.”