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One way to mitigate the skilled labor shortage is to encourage younger generations to enter the field. Read below for tips written by Joel Leonard of Plant Services magazine who regularly covers the workforce shortage, on ways to generate interest in pursuing careers in this industry.
1. Create a Retired Operations and Plant Engineering (ROPE) service. ROPE could be the lifeline needed to keep our plants competitive once the baby boomer generation retires. Meanwhile, consider hiring retired maintenance workers as part-time planners to take advantage of the valuable knowledge that is walking out of your plant.
2. Develop a national maintenance hotline. Manned by retired maintenance professionsals from ROPE or other experts, a hotline could help the next generation address the many maintenance problems that will be unfamiliar to them.
3. Build reliability development zones. Identify areas where manufacturing jobs are disappearing as reliability development zones, and train and certify the jobless. With a shortage of skilled labor nationwide, companies will migrate to these areas to take advantage of their surplus of reliability expertise.
4. Identify repairatory schools. Create magnet tech schools not the four year-preparatory schools that traditional tech schools are becoming, but true technical programs that provide principle-based maintenance training. MPACT Learning Center is a successful example.
5. Consider untrapped resources. I've noticed that reenactor regiments - grouls that replicated past war events - develop and advocate strong hand-made skills and self-reliance philosophies. If you value those attributes, learn more at www.quartermastershop.com/reenactor_groups_by_state.htm.
6. Recognize and reward excellence. Reward companies on the basis of regular maintenance audits performed by licensed consultants. Those organizations that receive high marks should receive insurance breaks and tax cuts.
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