Adapting the workforce to face new challenges

“A nation’s competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade. Companies gain advantage against the world’s best competitors because of pressure and challenge. They benefit from having strong domestic rivals, aggressive home-based suppliers, and demanding local customers.” This paragraph was written by Michael E. Porter in the March/April 1990 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

Business survival depends on the ability to adapt and meet challenges. Advances and innovation emerge from customer demand and industry challenges. The ability to adapt and innovate frequently arises from conflict. As an example, the quality of today’s vehicles is considered a direct result of competition from Japanese automakers during the 1980s and 1990s. New Japanese plants and quality processes forced the domestic auto companies to adapt better management and production activities.

Seeking Intellectual Diversity

One means of supporting productive internal conflict is to build an intellectually diverse workplace. Properly managed, the conflict from a diversity of opinions can lead to breakthroughs and innovations to solve real problems. In this context, “diversity” means a collection of different perspectives and opinions on how issues should be resolved. You can build diversity by recruiting across generations and accepting employees from varying educational disciplines.

I recently had a conversation with an executive with a large automotive supplier. In a room full of engineers, the consensus was that degrees in traditional STEM disciplines were quite valuable, while liberal arts degrees shouldn’t be supported. In my experience, this position is quite narrow-minded and contrary to the truth. At the very least, you want to attract employees with different backgrounds, interests, and hobbies. If your employees have identical backgrounds, creativity and problem-solving skills will suffer.

To remain competitive and improve your performance margins, you need to approach your forming operations from a perspective that challenges what you do and why you do it that way. You need new and fresh minds to ask “Why?” and find information-driven answers to either confirm or disprove old beliefs.

Questioning Rules of Thumb

One habit that confounds sheet metal forming leaders is the persistence of superstitions under the guise of “rules of thumb.” In a world where useful data can be generated for many activities, it is somewhat inane to rely on mid-20th and 19th century superstitions in decision-making.

These accepted rules of thumb represent heuristics from an age when a handful of manufacturers dominated industries, the ability to collect and analyze data was limited, and most work was executed manually. Coarse heuristics may have been good enough when competition was primarily domestic and a product’s end of life meant a landfill. Global competition, the increased volume of available materials, and an enlightened approach to environmental considerations changed the game. Sheet metal formers must now be more advanced in their understanding of material properties and production processes.

Managing advances in materials and technologies requires a workforce with diverse skills that now must understand the fundamentals of material properties, the impact of new forming technologies, logistics, virtual simulation, data management, and information analysis.

Those of us of a certain age remember our grandparents’ strange affinity for Lawrence Welk. We remember cast members dressed in strange, flowing costumes resembling nothing anyone ever wore and strains of accordion and band music devoid of soul or spirit. While grandma and grandpa spoke of how their “easy listening” was what music was supposed to be, we knew better. We listened to rock, pop, folk, and jazz. Generational music tastes evolved over the decades to include hip-hop, metal, electronic dance, and indie. Each musical evolution represented a new generation’s impulse to break from the comforts of the past and find its own way in the world, which brought us from Lawrence Welk to Excision. Having a range of generations in the workplace ensures the stability of experience and the challenges presented by youth.

Attracting and Retaining Young Workers

Successful businesses understand the need to maintain competitiveness by staying in touch with the evolving talents, skills, and tastes of newer generations. Attracting and retaining young employees requires both understanding and foresight. Young employees accustomed to hearing about the wonders of working in technology don’t really expect sleep pods and tents on the floor. They do, however, expect a safe and comfortable work environment, respect for their efforts, challenging projects, opportunities to learn new things, and career growth. In fact, their expectations are the same as previous generations’ when they started a new job. The biggest difference is the intensity of competition for ambitious and talented people.

In an age of great change in materials and technologies, it is important to attract intelligent talent willing to challenge accepted norms.

Taking Action

How can you support a drive of youth to manufacturing? We’ve all heard about what “Industry” should do. The problem is that industry really isn’t a thing as much as a classification. You are the industry in your world. If you want to attract people, you need to dive in and get involved. There are many ways to help:

• Sponsor or participate in robotics programs (All About High School Robotics)
• Offer plant tours. Clean up your facility and encourage employees to dress for public presentation. Have a good story about your history in your community. Sell it! (How to Make Your Plant Tour a Success - AllAboutLean.com)
• Actively participate in community organizations. Community organizations are a good way to generate goodwill for your company and support the people in your community. (Types of Community Organizations - Forbes)
• Be approachable and manage responsibly. Be an example for modern manufacturing and environmental ethics, and be willing to talk about it.
• Be open about your challenges entering a new age of manufacturing. Young people want to participate in challenging projects. Let them know that manufacturing and sheet metal forming are undergoing significant changes and that you count on them for their ideas and assistance in meeting tomorrow’s needs.
• Consider hiring nontraditional employees. The information technology industry is learning that liberal arts majors are trained to be curious, have a broad perspective of issues, and to learn continuously.

The global demand for greater product efficiency is driving innovation across the industry. Sheet metal suppliers are developing new materials. Corporate and university research is discovering new forming technologies. Supply chains are focusing on reducing the environmental impact of both manufacturing and the products they produce. As metal forming continues to evolve, the demands for better understanding of information, technology, and process will continue to grow. You must be creative in seeking the talent to compete in an increasingly global marketplace.