The below table lists what organizations and who within the organization are involved in coordinating Manufacturing Day and Month along with a summary of their responsibilities.
Connections and Defining Roles
The main reason why Manufacturing Day and Month is successful each year is due to the support of organizations and the people behind it. It takes teamwork in order to coordinate a wide scale event, which is why having connections to the right people or organizations are important. A trend that can be found is that the individual(s) leading the coordination of Manufacturing Day and Month are usually a part of or has great connections to the below summary of organizations and their major roles, based on the table above:
• Public school districts play a vital role in funding buses and obtaining a list of schools that can participate in Manufacturing Day and Month Industry Tours.
• Regional Manufacturer Associations are key in rallying support from local manufacturers whether it be offering a tour, sponsorship, or general support.
• Local colleges and career resource centers offer great career pathways to students attending tours and provide support where necessary.
However, there are plenty of other items not listed above that need to be reviewed or completed which includes promoting the event, creating a registration page, handling donations and etc. These additional roles are shared amongst the organizations coordinating the event and have no trend in who gets assigned a certain responsibility.
Funding
Manufacturing Day and Month requires a lot of financial support from organizations and falling short on funding can cause tours to be canceled. At FLATE many of the issues we hear from regional Manufacturing Day and Month coordinators is finding ways to fund lunches, shirts, and buses. However, one of the best practices mentioned by the interviewed Manufacturing Day and Month coordinators is having an organization or representative handle and ask for donations from local businesses. Some other ways to find support is to recruit some non-manufacturing members from local manufacturing associations such as banks, partner with the county’s educational foundation, or ask the local manufacturing association itself for assistance.
Planning Manufacturing Day
A common trend found in the responses was that planning for Manufacturing Day and Month usually begins in the spring or summer beginning with a review of last year’s event and begin contacting school districts, associations, and manufacturers for participants and hosts respectively. A note from SAMA states that teachers must be willing to participate and commit before school breaks from summer since it may delay the process to arrange buses. Once summer break has concluded, coordinators of Manufacturing Day and Month begin matching schools with manufacturers and gather information for t-shirt sizes. Throughout the planning of Manufacturing Day and Month, coordinators work together to promote the event and find funding from local businesses, associations, school districts, and etc.
Here are some other planning tips we have received from our respondents:
• Give the teachers a “save the date” so that when they return to school after summer, the date is already on their calendars.
• It’s good to begin contacting schools about details of the event after the school year begins so that you do not bombard the teachers when they are just getting things started with their classes.
• Do not schedule tours too soon with Manufacturers since they may not like booking events too early. Most coordinators begin recruiting during the summer months.
Manufacturing Day and Month Surveys
The main purpose behind Manufacturing Day and Month’s industry tours is to expose students to manufacturing fields and change the student’s perspective of manufacturing by breaking common misconceptions about the sector through meeting professionals and seeing manufacturing in action. To see how the industry tour has affected the students’ perspective, the Florida Advanced Technological Education Center (FLATE) developed a survey for students to take after the tour which contain questions such as, “Did this tour help you understand how STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math) are put to work in advanced manufacturing industries?” These surveys are collected by the local lead coordinator of Manufacturing Day and Month and sent to FLATE for data analysis. While analyzing each county’s data, FLATE also tracks the number of overall tours, hosts, schools, and students that participated in Manufacturing Day and Month in order to give a complete report to the coordinators and manufacturers once the event has concluded. These reports can help coordinators see the impact of industry tours on students and allows manufacturers to understand where they can improve in order to make a larger impact.
In addition to developing and analyzing surveys, FLATE also assists with promoting Manufacturing Day and Month through our FLATE Focus newsletter and providing free resources to coordinators, teachers, and manufacturers on the FLATE wiki. FLATE also supports coordinators by offering guidance on issues that they come across while planning industry tours.
FLATE thanks our fellow MFG Day and Month coordinators for answering our questionnaire and hope that it may be of use to others planning similar events. Visit the FLATE Wiki: Manufacturing Day Industry Resources Page for additional resources on Manufacturing Day and Month including promotional graphics, last year’s student survey report, and FLATE’s Best Practices on Tours. If you have questions about this article or would like to share how your region coordinates Manufacturing Day and Month, contact Marilyn Barger at barger@fl-ate.org.
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