The computer-controlled layering of materials to build up parts made of plastics, metals and other materials in the process known as 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is already in wide use as a prototyping tool. But it is gaining traction in production environments as well. The PwC report cites BAE Systems as an example of a major manufacturer that put 3D printing to work reducing costs. The company cut the cost to manufacture an aircraft part by more than 60 percent, eliminated tooling costs, and shortened the lead time for producing the part by two months with 3D printing. The jobs question Advanced technologies are not only spurring companies to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.; they are also changing the face of manufacturing, starting with the workers. “The industry is seeing a shift to a more tech-savvy worker, who possesses capabilities in coding and software development,” Bono says. In other words, new skills will be required for new and retooled manufacturing plants. “Today’s and tomorrow’s factory workers need computer skills to operate and program the machines.They will need skills in how to repair these machines,” LaPoint says. “I see more support jobs coming.” He also anticipates a rising demand for design and 3D printing services to meet the need for more 3D-printed parts. The necessary new skillsets will extend to management as well as workers, says Maxime St-Denis at CAI Global, a corporate investment consulting firm. “Managing a robot vs. a human being are two completely different tasks.” All of this means that while reshoring will indeed bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., they won’t be the same jobs that were here before.
“Reshoring will create more jobs in the U.S., but not at a one-to¬-one ratio, as compared to offshore locations prior to the reshoring,” Bono says. Gattorna is a little more direct in his assessment. “Ultimately,” he says, “there will be fewer jobs required.”After all, automation is, by definition, the outsourcing of tasks formerly done by people to machines. Even so, experts say that one of the biggest challenges to successful reshoring is actually a shortage of workers with the right skills. “I think one of the biggest threats to reshoring is talent acquisition,” LaPoint says. “We do not have an adequate supply of the right trained people.” A report from The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte called “The Skills Gap in U.S. Manufacturing 2015 and Beyond” backs him up. It predicts that there will be 3.4 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S. by 2025—and only 1.4 million skilled workers to fill them. It’s going to be up to a new generation of workers to fill those jobs. “With the traditional manufacturing model coming to an end and the rise of the technological era, this will result in the retirement of the aging working population in conjunction with the rise of the younger generation entering the workforce, thus replenishing and modernizing the ever-evol Even collaborative robotics booster Lawton acknowledges the impact on employment that automation has brought and will continue to bring. “There is always going to be some element of what I call ‘the jobs question,’” he says, noting that managing the reactions of workers to increased automation is an important factor in deploying it effectively. “Automation is designed to eliminate my job,
right? So why would I be interested in deploying this stuff?”That’s a typical reaction, Lawton says, adding, “How the organization has thought that through will have a big impact on how much this kind of technology is either embraced by the organization or how much reluctance there is to consider things like this.” Looking toward the future Despite the inevitable impact of automation on the workforce, Lawton is confident that, in the coming era of advanced manufacturing, workers and robots will peacefully coexist. “Every factory worker, the first thing they’re going to get is a robot; and the robot is going to be an extension of them,” he says. “It’s going to be a tool they can use to help them do their job better, and they will control the robot and what it does.” That control, he says, is key to fostering the acceptance of robots by workers in the shared workspace. The result of these and other technological developments will be the factory of the near future “almost living and breathing...just growing and getting better over time through its own operation,” Lawton says. The goal is production that moves in harmony with demand, Gattorna says, “so that as one product is purchased, a replacement is immediately produced.” But the future is still being defined, Lawton says. “As much as you and I and other people will speculate on what that future’s going to look like, it’s so open-ended in terms of the range of possibilities. There’s a certain amount of wonder associated with that that frankly hasn’t really been part of automation as much over the last 20 years or so. I think it’s going to be very exciting from that point of view.” Source: Automation World 79
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June 2016 49 • Nov / Dec 2015