Workforce remains top issue for MAPP members

Twenty years ago, when the group that became the Manufacturers Association for Plastics Processors was just getting started, the vexing issue driving company executives was building a skilled workforce.

Today, you could say it's "déjà vu all over again," to quote baseball great Yogi Berra.

Workforce is again the biggest challenge — by far — facing MAPP companies, according to a report the group released earlier this year.

Ninety-two percent of its companies listed workforce as one of their top challenges, well ahead of the second-ranking problem, new business development and sales growth, at 27 percent.

"MAPP was initially started because the industry had a severe shortage of skilled help," said Lindsey Hahn, one of MAPP's founders and a past president. "We're kind of back full circle to that again."

It's grown rapidly as a worry in the last five years, the group's survey indicates. In 2012, 45 percent of MAPP companies ranked it a top challenge, a sizable number but half of today's level.

In general, executives with MAPP, based in Indianapolis, said that as business has improved, finding workers has become a more acute challenge.

"We're all in a situation where we have a limited amount of skilled help and we're trying to find out where that next generation … is coming from," said Hahn, who is also an executive at Metro Plastics Technologies Inc. in Noblesville, Ind. "We've pretty well decided that we have train them ourselves."

Companies are doing more of that.

Ryan Richey, a MAPP board member and executive vice president at injection molder Precision Plastics Inc. in Columbia City, Ind., said his company is working with other manufacturers and local schools to build a job shop within schools for students to learn the basics.

"We're looking at partnering with other companies in the area to contribute assets to that, and figure out what a basic job shop would be able to give them the soft skills and some of the hard skills that companies need," he said.

Precision Plastics must sell local schools, parents and the students themselves that there are good jobs in manufacturing.

"We're educating the students and we're educating the parents, which is as important, if not more important, than educating the students, and educating the school systems as well, that there are a number of viable jobs in our community" in manufacturing, he said.

The National Association of Manufacturers in Washington estimates ​ there are 400,000 unfilled jobs in manufacturing today, and that number could rise to 2 million by 2025 because of the gap between the higher-tech needs of factories and the skills workers have.

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One MAPP leader said that he thinks companies need to start dedicating specific staff to working with local schools, a sort of a chief education officer.

"I honestly feel that one of the resources that will be on a company's staff, if you don't already have one, will be a dedicated resource for someone from your company that integrates with the local community's education system," said Troy Nix, executive director of MAPP. "You'll have this education liaison, because you are battling.

"You have to lift your head up three and four years down the road, you need to be in that high school, you need to be in the tech school," Nix said. "You need to be bringing people in."

But if the needs are great, MAPP's survey suggests executives are not sure exactly what they should do about it.

While 92 percent rated it a top problem, MAPP noted that "only" 14 percent of those executives in turn said their companies planned major activities and investment around workforce development in 2017.

It ranked fourth on the priority list, behind additional spending to increase capacity (26 percent), investment in automation (22 percent) and spending on continuous improvement programs (18 percent).

Nix said the low ranking for workforce investment may reflect that executives just don't classify it as investment in a traditional sense, like buying a machine, even though their companies are spending money and investing staff time with the problem.

But others said it could reflect that companies don't know what to do.

"I don't think anybody has come up with a really good idea on how to bring these people in," Richey said.

MAPP President Ben Harp said it's not clear why that gap is there between it being the top-ranked problem, but only the fourth-ranked investment.

"It's a primary concern of ours and we're focusing on it, and I'm not sure why they might have responded that way in a survey," said Harp, chief operating officer of Polymer Conversions Inc. in Orchard Park, N.Y. "It might be because they don't know what to do.

"We're trying to collaborate, talk to each other and develop the playbook on how we attract and train and develop the people that will drive our industry going forward," he said.

MAPP executives said they're trying several things.

Harp said MAPP has launched a young leadership program aimed at getting employees under 40 more involved in the group, "to talk to them, to understand how they see it, what they think our companies should be doing, how we should be approaching new employees … vs. how we've done it, how we see."

"We're trying to really look under the sheets and do the things that attract those people to the industry," he said.

Hahn pointed to another initiative: MAPP in early September announced the winners of its inaugural "HR Best Practices" awards to help spread ideas among its members.

He said he believes public attitudes toward manufacturing are changing for the better, fueled in part by a sense that industry is returning to the United States: "We've lost so much industry overseas and a lot of it seems to be coming back."

Nix pointed to another MAPP program, a series of education outreach awards that it started last year, for recognizing companies engaging with schools to get students interested in manufacturing.

"The trend I see is that you're going to have to invest resources [with local schools] and/or a combination of you're really going to have to get better at automating and taking unnecessary labor out," Nix said.

One technology attracting attention is cobots, or collaborative robots, Nix said, because of how closely they can be integrated with people in the factory and new flexibility that could allow manufacturers. MAPP's annual conference in October will have a special program on cobots, he said.

Hahn said he believes the outreach is starting to work, and local schools are seeing vocational training as a good option for some students.

"I think the schools, I think government is beginning to understand that skilled trades are a viable option to a college degree," he said. "A vocational degree right now is much more practical and useful than a degree in history."