Looking
at some of the details, the recommendations for “Enabling Innovation” outlines suggestions to provide infrastructure (including communication) and resources
to support all phases of innovation for new products, technologies, and
manufacturing processes. Recommendations to support an improved manufacturing
business climate focus on optimizing stakeholder interactions and
communications about markets, supply chains, technologies etc., and increasing access
to capital investments. Closer to home and our work at FLATE, are the
recommendations of the Talent Pipeline pillar.
The four
recommendations under this pillar are to: 1) launch a national campaign to
change the image of manufacturing and support National Manufacturing Day’s
efforts; 2) Incentivize private investment in the implementation of a system of
stackable skill certifications; 3) make online training and accreditation
programs eligible for federal support; and 4) Curate the documents, toolkits
and play books developed by AMP 2.0. (The
Manufacturing Institute will be the curator of the publications).
Over the
past few years, there have been a number of national and regional efforts to
change the
community perception of manufacturing in the U.S. In addition to
FLATE’s own “Made in Florida”
outreach initiatives and activities, there are a number of national efforts.
These include: the national Dream It, Do It campaign; ChampionNow!; The Edge
Factor video and curriculum series; American Made Movie and its educational
resources; increasing number of student robotics competitions, commercial and
college level design and innovation competitions; and the growing grassroots efforts
of the “Maker Movement”. Some of these are partnering around the co-sponsored
national Manufacturing Day. Hopefully, this alignment will continue so efforts do
not compete, but grow more cooperative. Most have a special niche in the social
puzzle of changing perception and changing culture. Partnering is the key to
maximizing the efforts.
The second
and forth recommendations of the talent pipeline pillar provide support to the
Manufacturing Institute’s (MI) ongoing efforts to integrate industry
credentials into technical education for manufacturing. Incentivizing the use
of industry credentials (#2) is certainly a national policy push, and the
resource development and dissemination (#4) will provide support resources for
local efforts. The new “toolkits” are already available on the MI website. Each
of the toolkits was developed to help a particular stakeholder group: educators,
industry, and the community. They include some “how to” ideas and best
practices as well as templates for approaching and presenting to various
partners.
In
Florida, industry credentials have been a strong and robust component of the
technical education landscape for nearly a decade, especially in our secondary
schools. As part of the Florida gold standard for career academies, Florida CTE
students have been earning industry credentials along with their diplomas and
using them to articulate credit to associate level technical programs since
2007. Although industry credentials are now part of the way we do business in
Florida’s public education system, we still need to engage more employers and
add industry credentials to preferred hiring criteria along with educational
credentials. We invite everyone to review pathways, articulations, and
alignments of our associate degree in Engineering Technology that supports
manufacturing statewide and now is offered at 15 Florida colleges (http://fl-ate.org/projects/Stackable-Credentials-Aligned-Certificates.html).
The full EOP report can be accessed at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/pcast/docsreports.
The MI resources can be downloaded at: http://www.themanufacturinginstitute.org/Skills-Certification/Skills-Certification.aspx.
Changing
gears, I invite you to catch up with more news stories in this November edition of
the FLATE Focus. Give a shout out to our FLATE Awardees. While perusing through the articles take a stab at this
month’s new sTEm puzzle, and get up-to-speed with the hottest trend in manufacturing as we explore 3D printing as a new technological frontier to engage students in STEM and manufacturing. We have also tabulated all the surveys and post event data from National Manufacturing Day in Florida and you can track some remarkable strides FLATE and its partners have taken to make national manufacturing day in Florida a statewide success. It truly was a cohesive effort and the kudos goes not to one organization alone but to everyone who contributed to making this a successful endeavor. We also have a guest writer this month from Florida TRADE @HCC who brings you a story outlining their strategic efforts in getting veterans credentialed and ready to work in a high-tech industry.
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