The National Council for Advanced Manufacturing has a very impressive wish list... What would you add, subtract modify?

Priority # 1 -- Build a better Educated and Trained Workforce

• Increase credentialing and/or certification for all workforce members.
• Increase focus on career and educational pathways and pipelines for all learners.
• Increase parent and student awareness of manufacturing career opportunities.
• Use competency models to shape career decision-making.
• Require applied learning in all schools serving K - 20 students.

On October 5th, the US National Manufacturing Day went so well that it has sparked other states to create events and activities. To help spur more to break down the silos between educational systems and manufacturing below is what NC is planning next year. A series of events statewide to mass promote manufacturing opportunities in school. Shame that has not been years earlier or the reputed 600,000 unfilled skilled labor jobs would be addressed.

Dates:
• Manufacturing Awareness Week - April 8-12, 2013
• Manufacturing Open House at Local Community Colleges - April 9, 2013

As promised sharing more information on the Fiscal Cliff. This is from colleague on the National Defense Workforce Advisory Committee, Laurie Moncrieff. Let's all stand up and be heard. Tell Congress that they need to FIX-IT NOW!

THE VIEW OF THE CLIFF FROM AN ACROPHOBIC

I am a parent, spouse, small business owner, manufacturer, neighbor, and friend. I am the segment of the economy that is painfully aware that in the past 10 years we have experienced an economic downturn second only to the “Great Depression.”

We all hope that US Congressional leaders will resolve the Fiscal Cliff that is hovering over our country but as US Congress plays political chicken and as we approach the December 31st, 2012 deadline, it is important that more prepare for mass shedding of jobs and end of year closings.

How confident are you that partisan politics will subside and a deal will be made that will keep a preventable recession avoided? Are you prepared?

If you are blessed to have a vacation day to celebrate Veterans day, please take some time to develop a strategy to take advantage of the tax breaks, the new labor pool coming back from deployment, and grow your business.

Be bold, be strong, be patriotic, but more importantly be smart hire veterans.

I have had the pleasure of supporting the CPMM Veterans project underway at Fort Bragg and Fayetteville Technical Community College and to date over 60 students have passed the CPMM after completing a 4 day review over the last several month.

If you are blessed to have a vacation day to celebrate Veterans day, please take some time to develop a strategy to take advantage of the tax breaks, the new labor pool coming back from deployment, and grow your business.

Be bold, be strong, be patriotic, but more importantly be smart hire veterans.

I have had the pleasure of supporting the CPMM Veterans project underway at Fort Bragg and Fayetteville Technical Community College and to date over 60 students have passed the CPMM after completing a 4 day review over the last several month.

Hello from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I just traveled 35 hours to conduct another Maintenance Crisis Workshop and CPMM review to South East Asia engineers.

Since I arrived early, my Malaysian ambassador, Husna Shukor, a facilties maintenance engineer at a local semi-conductor plant showed me their new cities in Malaysia, Putrajaya and Cyberjaya.

Putrajaya is the new adminstrative capital of Malaysia built to showcase the best of Malaysian architecture and to provide government services in a non-congested environment.

More from Wikipedia below:

Klaus M. Blache, Ph.D., MBA, CPE, is research professor at the University of Tennessee College of Engineering.

Tomorrow all across the country our nation will be celebrating Halloween by encouraging another generation of kids to become candy beggars or hoodlum threats by tricking or treating their neighborhoods.

Amazing how much has changed in the last ten years. With the signing of NAFTA and future off-shoring of manufacturing, technical schools were shut down and law schools were opening up in every major city across the country. It was called progress. DC thought leaders pushed the service economy as being the superior economic approach for the US to follow. Over a million US manufacturing jobs liquidated, many projected that the US would no longer have manufacturing in the 21st century.