Managing Automation‘s fourth Progressive Manufacturing Summit continues. Disconnects both between workers’ skills and companies’ needs and between IT and automation teams are among some highlights and insights so far today. But first, one more thing about yesterday’s agenda…

Due to the huge influx in global sourcing, entirely new classes of supply chain uncertainties in addition to time-honored risks — geopolitical, logistical, regulatory, natural disaster and currency-related — must now be managed if a business is to successfully deal with supplier interruptions and have the right product in the right place at the right time.

In the final panel of yesterday’s agenda, 87 percent of Progressive Manufacturing Summit attendees said they believe risks to global supply chain operations have increased since one year ago and continue to increase.

The proliferation of offshore outsourcing and multiple tiers in recent years has created a longer and more complex supply chain. And the more complex the supply chain, the more risky (or at least uncertain) the supply chain.

Tom Dadmun, VP of supply chain at ADTRAN, discussed the growing interest in “reshoring,” or bringing back a business’s production/service after dissatisfaction over offshoring it. It’s a concept we discussed toward the beginning of the year (minus the term reshoring). It is an interesting and, to many, exciting trend.

Typically, companies have invested in moving operations to less-costly locations in the world, including China and India, among others. But now labor costs have risen in a number of these places, and continue to rise, eliminating the reason and benefit for having moved there in the first place.

Now, due to the rising labor costs noted above, in addition to skyrocketing transport costs and the required ability to be flexible, a growing number of companies are reconsidering moving various aspects of the supply chain operations to a far-away land, and those who already have offshored are considering removing their production or services elsewhere.

However, before we start celebrating the return of job functions that originally started here in the U.S., it is critical to understand that these functions may not move back to the U.S. from Asia, but rather to Latin America or elsewhere nearby (where they’d be days away instead of weeks away, transport-wise).

UPDATE 1:

There are plenty of workforce challenges today’s manufacturing industry faces. Not the least of these is a large generation of workers approaching (traditional) retirement age and the looming threat of fewer highly qualified workers to take their place.

Only 41 percent of U.S. manufacturing’s workforce today is directly engaged in production, according to the summit’s agenda. The remaining 59 percent includes engineers, IT professionals, mathematicians and business professionals. “Even assembly-line positions require new skill sets.”

What is the right formula for hiring?

UPDATE 2:

Eric Mittelstadt, CEO of the National Council For Advanced Manufacturing (NACFAM), points to a relatively unsuccessful national education system is a key factor for the inability of manufacturers to attain the highly qualified workers of tomorrow. He emphasizes the country’s need to create a world-class national education system, from K-12 through higher education. (We talked about Mittelstadt a little bit yesterday.)

Stacey Wagner, principal at Jarrett Wagner Group and former managing director at the National Association of Manufacturers’ Center for Workforce Success, says one of the large failings of manufacturing is failing to develop strategies to entice and engage highly skilled workers. She points to younger generations’ outdated perception of the manufacturing industry.

However, she also notes that great things are happening for manufacturing and engineering in education (she cites SkillsUSA, among others).

UPDATE 3:

Same panel: Maureen Steinwall, president of Steinwall, Inc., is approaching the workforce issue from a different angle: the need to tap into human behavior.

“Manufacturing is plagued with bullying bosses,” she says. “This is not empowerment.”

Steinwall repeatedly notes the huge, under-utilized potential of people. One of her strategies throughout years has been to hire a number of people whose “resumes look awful,” training them, empowering them, tapping into their creativity (which the education system failed to do, which is why they might not have stellar education credentials) — and turning them into hugely successful employees in their professional.

Based on the management skills she’s attained over the past 30 years, and as president of a small business with few resources with which to work, it is this ground-level approach to hiring that she focuses on.

The approaches addressed in this and the previous update bring up an interest question for hiring managers — actually, for industrial businesses in general.

The question is this: In terms of attaining and retaining a highly skilled workforce of tomorrow, should focus be on the micro or macro level? I.e., on people or policies?

I suspect it should be a bit of both. But small-biz owners often don’t have the time or resources to immerse themselves completely in policy involvement. As Mittelstadt mentioned a little while ago, that is what associations are for.

UPDATE 4:

Do your IT and automation teams work together? Ever? In a quick poll, only 14 percent of summit attendees said their companies use well-established processes to have IT and automation teams collaborate.

Traditionally, these two groups have worked sperately. (They have also had their own respective opinions of one another…) For one, IT usually stays off the plant floor.

However, market forces — the economy, fuel and raw materials costs, any/all impact on the bottom line — are driving this disparity/misalignment to change.

“It boils down to the culture of the company,” says Robert Reed, VP of manufacturing at Coffee Bean International, in a panel on bringing IT and automation teams together. As long as both teams understand that “you’re here to help the company,” this disconnect can change.

UPDATE 5:

Same panel: The following are a few common characteristics, acknowledged among the three panelists, for bringing IT and automation teams closer together in collaboration (loosely “Best Practices”):

• Establish cross-functional teams;

• Allocate budget (This is a big one!); and

• Get buy-in from the top and from both sides.

An additional need is to have standard, easy-to-use tech systems, according to Alison Smith, research director at AMR Research, who makes clear that there is value in enticing younger workers with computers and tech that are not outdated: “Some of us have laptop computers at home that are stronger than systems in the plant.”

This goes back to something Reed mentioned a little earlier in the discussion. The manufacturing division of Coffee Bean International trains factory workers on computer use and the like. This frees up IT workers’ time to get involved on the plant floor, something Reed wishes would take place more frequently.

Reed offered this anecdote from when he first started at Coffee Bean International: “The automation team didn’t even know where the IT team was located. ‘If we have a computer problem, we’re supposed to e-mail them.’”

“Well, if the computer doesn’t work, how are we supposed to e-mail them to let them know that?” he continued. Reed then took the automation team over to IT and introduced everyone to one another.

That’s a start. A looming brain drain of tribal knowledge is already hurting businesses. As such, knowledge-sharing is crucial.

The collaboration theme has been echoed throughout the summit yesterday and today. When asked to reveal the biggest lesson learned from Boeing’s push to bring the much-delayed 787 to market, Tim Opitz, who we mentioned yesterday, said: “The single biggest thing we’re trying to figure out is how we do that integration” of people across the company and outside its walls.

“They don’t naturally come together,” he said.

Did you read yesterday’s highlights from the show?