At one point, Mr. Hilton talked about the bias against post-secondary paths other than a four-year college. Governor Reynolds acknowledged the problem and went on to talk about the change in manufacturing. “The factory floor today isn’t the same factory floor that my dad worked in forty years ago,” she said. And the workforce isn’t the same either.
There is a rich and fascinating new article on the Knowledge@Wharton website, which underscores those points as well as making several others. It is an interview with
Justin Rose
, who is the managing director in the Chicago office of the Boston Consulting Group. If the topic is of interest, you will want to read the whole interview. We shall highlight just three points.
First, U.S. manufacturing is strong and seems poised to become even stronger as the nature of supply chains shifts. In discussing global manufacturing, Mr. Rose said:
For the last 30 years, people have talked about the globalization of supply chains. My belief is that in the next 30 years we are going to see that flatten out.
Elaborating, Mr. Rose cited three drivers of the changes he anticipates in global supply chains. The flattening of cost structure, including, for example, rising wages in China; trade tensions; and technology.
Second, the challenge of filling jobs that demand skills with people who have those skills is not just a U.S. problem. Here is what Mr. Rose said on that point:
We researched this several years ago. … We pulled headlines from Germany, from China, from Japan. We looked at newspapers and blogs and magazines. And they all said there is a crisis, we don’t have enough skilled workers. And yes, there is a skills gap in the United States, and this will be a huge challenge and a growing challenge going forward.
Third, for us the most powerful sentence in the Wharton interview was this from Justin Rose:
Workers, especially in a highly skilled manufacturing world, are a true competitive asset for a company.
He followed that with advice on the management of that asset, concluding
The companies that do this well are going to have a huge advantage because they are going to have a workforce that is energized, loyal, and capable.
***
Editor’s Note
. This – workforce training – is essentially a new topic for us. Our intention is to make it a regular feature of these pages.