Are you going to help us celebrate Manufacturing Day?

Are you going to sit by and let the sports and entertainment industries dominate and continue to fill our kids minds with glory, achievement and false promises of wealth?

Where are you going to get updated in your skills this fall? How do you plan on networking and upgrading your skilled sets? Hope you can convince your employers to allow you to break away and sharpen your knowledge, understanding and gather more resources to advance your business and careers.

In hopes that we get a chance to meet, below is my current fall schedule:

Upcoming Fall Events for Joel Leonard

October 5th National Manufacturing Day Salute to Triad Employers
www.mfgday.com
Greensboro, NC

October 16th- 17th National Defense Workforce Advisory Board

Remember when you first started out trying to crack into the business world and uncovered the absurdity that companies wanted to fill entry level positions with experienced workers? Thus the new graduates had great difficulty in locating positions to get the experience needed to get a job.

Still those issues are a challenge to fresh graduates who also have to compete with displaced workers from the great recession for the limited job opportunities. How can they get experience unless given an opportunity to build the experience?

Finding those willing to pick up paychecks is easy, but finding those willing to work to earn those paychecks is becoming increasingly difficult. Especially finding those few workers with the much desired technical skill sets to run, manage and maintain modern equipment.

SILOS- Self interested Locations of our Society are inhibiting collaboration and support and we must discover ways to overcome them so that more support employers needs.

Despite high levels of unemployment across the country, employers still complain about locating quality talent and resources ready for work. Compounding this issue is that many educational outlets spend more time coaching students how to charm their way into and out of an interview into a job.

While the rest of the country will be hearing all kinds of hoopla, protests, occupy movements, riots, and campaign platform speeches out of North Carolina during the Democratic National Convention in coming weeks, several regions are feverishly working to develop a solid pipeline of qualified technicians to address the skill shortages in critical career paths.

Can't help but love the current trend in business to reshore manufacturing to the US. Coincidentally, while eating at a Japanese steakhouse recently, another diner was getting his last US meal before departing to Poland. He was going to Poland to take apart a multi-million dollar V-Belt production machine and ship it back Mississippi to run future components there. To help spur this movement along sharing Harry Moser of the Reshoring Initiative justification below.

To help more manufacturers benefit from the upcoming National Manufacturing Day, sharing some tips to help host open houses and plant tours.

This national movement is going to help eliminate the misperceptions of industry from being dark, dusty, dumb and dangerous to being a cool work environment where good careers can be had.

Read below and download this link to help maximize your companies results from participation.

http://www.mfgday.com/pdfs/Plant-Tour-Guide-NAM.pdf

Quick Tips for Open House Hosts
©Manufacturing Day 2012

Manufacturing Day has been designed to expand knowledge about and improve general public perception of manufacturing careers and manufacturing’s value to the North American economy. In addition, manufacturers will learn about business improvement resources and services delivered through manufacturing extension partnerships.

HOST AN OPEN HOUSE

As a manufacturer it’s your opportunity to:
• Tell your company’s story
• Dispel outdated myths about manufacturing
• Inspire a new generation of manufacturers
• Connect with potential customers in your community

"Build it they will come."

Remember that line from the film classic "Field of Dreams"? What many do not know in order to film the scene at the end where all of the cars were meandering down a dirt road to see the field in the cornfields of Iowa, a local radio station instructed all of the drivers where to go and how to get there.

The point being that is that even if you build it, they will only come if you tell them about it.

So how do we get more support for Manufacturing in the US? How do we break down the negative image of being dark, dirty and dangerous?