Sep 19, 2014 4 min read

CALIFORNIA – A German company that makes high-tech components for manufacturers of all types is using its longtime industrial training experience to bring American workers up to speed on advanced manufacturing techniques.

During a three-day session at California University of Pennsylvania for about 50 of its sales distributors from the East Coast and Mid-Atlantic regions, Festo Corp.’s Tony Oran, the company’s U.S. training and education manager, demonstrated the company’s automation components to those who sell the equipment to customers. They range from high schools, community colleges and universities to all types of industries.

The training of sales representatives is significant because Festo recently acquired Lab-Volt Systems Inc., a New Jersey company that makes training systems for technicians.

The merger made sense, because the two companies had complementary products, said David Rohm, president of Educational Solutions Enterprises, a Poconos-area company that distributes five different product lines, including Festo’s.

Rohm, who attended the three-day session, explained while Lab-Volt emphasized components for training technicians, Festo’s line reaches everything from vocational-technical schools to community colleges and universities.

While Oran acknowledged the necessity to bring sales forces up to date on expanded equipment lines, he said Festo has a broader mission in the United States – ensuring the workforce is adequately trained for modern manufacturing jobs.

Festo, which began in Germany as a maker of wood tools, took a leap forward when one of its founders came to America to learn how to apply pneumatics to improve production processes.

After Festo became a pneumatics company, it began a training program for companies in Germany that wanted to use the technology. That was in 1925. Today, with $3 billion in annual revenue, it is one of the largest automation companies in the world.

Its Festo Didactic education unit was created to teach workers how to use its equipment.

While Festo has a customer base in the United States that can facilitate that mission through a “train the trainer” teaching system at schools, Oran said the U.S. manufacturing industry, which is now moving some offshore production back to America, poses several challenges.

According to some studies, about 2 million U.S. jobs go unfilled because of shortfalls in skills, training or education.

There also is the perception manufacturing jobs are a vestige of America’s industrial past – “that they’re dark, dirty and dead-end,” Oran said.

Flash ahead to the present day, and most American production processes have adopted advanced manufacturing techniques that require fewer workers on the shop floor, but demand more people with technical training that can operate and repair sophisticated equipment and plan production.

Michael Amrhein, director of Cal U.’s office of Outreach and Integration for Technology, Engineering, Art, Math and Science, said the university introduced its bachelor of science degree program in mechatronics a year ago to train students for careers in manufacturing as well as in the natural gas industry.

Mechatronics includes the disciplines of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, programming and control technology, all of which are used in advanced manufacturing and oil and gas.

The Cal U. program, which now has 65 students enrolled, uses Festo’s equipment to give students hands-on experience in hydraulics, controls and other process automation techniques.

The degree program comes at a time when many American companies are bringing some of their manufacturing back from foreign countries, prompting talk of a manufacturing renaissance here.

“Programs like ours will help with the reshoring effort,” Amrhein said.

But the disconnect between available American manufacturing jobs and appropriate training for those positions remains problematic, Oran said.

He noted in Germany, high schools provide students with technical training based on the needs of manufacturers in their area. The companies, in turn, provide two-year apprenticeships to train workers, a practice that has all but disappeared in American industry.

He noted people who become chief executive officers of German manufacturing companies have come through the apprentice system, where a hands-on emphasis of the manufacturing process gives them an understanding of all facets of the production techniques and challenges of the facilities under their watch.

While the influx of German manufacturing companies with operations in the United States helped Festo make inroads with its training, Oran said the company continues to seek partnerships with schools like Cal U. to broaden its reach.

While acknowledging that it would be impossible to simply overlay the German system of training onto American factories, “we have an initiative in Festo to adapt the German model to the United States,” he said.