By Bryce Airgood
The Port Huron Times Herald
PORT HURON (AP) - There was a time in her life when Jaclyn Radford, 21, thought computer numerical control would be in her future.
That is, until she attended a Manufacturing Day event as a sophomore at Capac High School and discovered she thought being a CNC operator looked like the most boring job.
"I went yeah, this is not for me," she said.
However, six years later, Radford is actually in the manufacturing field. She is an electrical technician for Blue Water Controls, a custom automation equipment provider in Clyde Township. And she loves it.
"It's something different every day," she said.
There's no one set job with the position. She builds electrical panels and assembly machines, does field wiring and programs censors. There's all this planning and designing and she gets to see it all work at the end.
"It's a really rewarding job," she said.
But Radford does not think anyone associates her job with manufacturing. She definitely didn't when she was in high school.
That's what Manufacturing Day is for, opening peoples' eyes to what the field of manufacturing offers.
Although the day is held annually on the first Friday of October, schools and businesses throughout St. Clair County and Michigan worked together so high school students could visit manufacturers throughout the month, the Port Huron Times Herald reported.
Some companies have participated for years, like the Marysville SMR Automotive Systems USA, Inc. plant.
Terri McKinnie, employee engagement coordinator, said the company wants the next generation of kids to be exposed to jobs in manufacturing facilities.
The company is always looking for future employees who bring fresh ideas to the table. But this opportunity also opens the students' eyes to options out there like an alternative to college if they don't want to take that path, she said.
Some companies participated in Manufacturing Day for the first time this year, like Blue Water Controls, which was excited to host 83 high school sophomores from Memphis on Oct. 18, manager Debby Wolfe said in an email.
There were six stations set up where students learned about the mechanical and control designs, machining, welding, assembly and programming of robots. Most stations were hands-on, giving students the opportunity to fully integrate themselves in the process, she said.
Are students and manufacturers seeing the benefits?
"It's certainly something very important to ZF and the industry," said Tony Sapienza, North America communications director for auto supplier ZF, whose Marysville plant also gave students tours.
Sophomore year is a point in a lot of students' lives where they have to make choices about where they want their future to take them, said Mike Palmer, Port Huron High School principal.
These choices include whether the students want to be a part of the tech program, whether they want to enroll in the Blue Water Middle College Academy or if they want to dive into STEM classes and engineering.
The school wants students to get experience through things like Manufacturing Day tours so they can see what the jobs are like in real life and get prepared for what it takes to get there, Palmer said.
Radford said if there was a book with all the jobs in the world on it, it would be a very overwhelming and very big book.
Through Manufacturing Day students might see something they could do for the rest of their lives. Or, they could discover it is something they're really not interested in.
Even cutting potential jobs out of the playing field can help narrow down students' choices and help them find what they're really passionate about, Radford said.
She does think Manufacturing Day events work and open a world to students that they might not have known about.
Nate Tank, the organizational development specialist at the Marysville ZF plant, said Manufacturing Day is a "neat opportunity, especially in St. Clair County."
"The demystifying of manufacturing is really what we're doing here," he said.
Naturally, giving students tours of manufacturing plants is a way to try and change negative perceptions on the field. A lot of people think factories are inherently dirty or dangerous, but you can't run an operation that way, he said.
It's also "not overly loud" and quiet when compared with historical noise levels.
With the tours, students can decide for themselves if it's something they'd like to do in the future.
"There's so much opportunity out there in manufacturing," Tank said.
He didn't want to get into the numbers, but during tours plant employees let students know that there are jobs available without degrees that will put them solidly in the middle class.
"That can be done through college, but it doesn't have to," Tank said.
Wolfe said the Blue Water Controls facility is clean, it's safe and it's a highly skilled environment. Employees work in a field of rapid advancements in technology that includes electronics, automation and robotics. They create new things and build new technology.
"Manufacturing opens a world of opportunities and advancements, with great pay," she said. "There are programming and design jobs for the 'computer nerds.' There are machine-builder jobs for the 'hands on' types of folks. The Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center website reports that the 2017 average hourly earnings for manufacturing is $32/hour!"
Palmer said each time the high school goes on these manufacturing tours it "opens kids' eyes" to some of the resources in the community. The amount of creativity that goes into it surprises them.
"There's a lot more of problem solving, a lot more of teamwork," he said. "More than just assembly work."
There are different positions, whether it is as an engineer, a member of human resources or in a high or low-skilled labor position.
Sapienza said manufacturing is a "complex orchestra" and there are hundreds if not thousands of moving parts.
People think it's dirty and there's heavy lifting, but it has become more sophisticated and technology will transform the manufacturing landscape.
It's a "fascinating new era," and it's making the job better for the human body, he said.
Tank said out on the plant floor there are several different trades, like pipefitters, which there is a "critical shortage of."
Although the Marysville plant has been able to fill those types of positions, there is a shortage of electricians, millwrights, pipefitters, people who repair machines and tool makers in the manufacturing field.
With these skilled trade positions, it is extremely rare to find anyone doing them under 40 years old, Tank said.
He thinks a real disservice has been done to students by pushing them down a collegiate path when it might not be the best fit for them.
Maybe manufacturing is not as big of a chunk of the economy as it once was so students don't get as much exposure as they used to, but there is a spot in manufacturing for "darn near everybody," Tank said.
"There's really opportunity for everybody regardless of their background in a manufacturing environment," he said.
Wolfe said manufacturers need people to invest in.
"Manufacturing in rural east Michigan makes it a bit difficult to recruit employees," she said. "The growth in the automation industry is quickly outpacing the number of skilled and trained workers."
While there has been a lot of automation in the manufacturing field, Tank said the positions lost to it are "simple, redundant, heavy and dangerous."
"Not really the jobs you want to do," Tank said.
He added manufacturing jobs now require critical thinking and are less manual labor than historically thought of.
"People are really going to be the backbone of manufacturing now and in the future," Tank said.
While they were on the SMR tour, Port Huron High School students Taylor Colston and Kiley Hendricks walked on the designated path, machinery and crates towering over them during some parts.
They thought the plant would be foggy, but it wasn't. There were people operating the machinery and there were beeps everywhere.
"There's so many noises, I couldn't work here," one of them said.
Hendricks said she wants to be a teacher. Colston wasn't sure what she wants to be, but she knows she wants to be happy.
Colston also knows that she doesn't want to go into manufacturing. It gives her anxiety with all the movement going on. Hendricks said she actually does see a lot of people going into the field, including her cousin who is in her 20s.
The two students did still think there is still a future in manufacturing for people their age.
"Everybody has to do something," Colston said.
While she was talking to students at Blue Water Controls' Manufacturing Day event, Radford saw there were a couple students that didn't want to be there.
There were also some students who were very engaged and asking questions.
All she can hope is that students took something away from the day, whether it was finding their passion or discovering something they're just really not into.
She also thinks there's a future in manufacturing for people her age and younger. If students want to go into a field that's "growing" and "that's never going to die," manufacturing is the field to go into, she said.
"If you can program a robot, you've got serious job security," she said.
Published: Tue, Nov 05, 2019
