High School students glimpse career opportunities on Manufacturing Day
CECIL – Brian Elliott, an employee of the manufacturer AccuTrex, told a group of high school students Friday morning, “Not too long ago, I was you guys.”
And, by implication, those students could, before too long, be Elliott.
That was one of the lessons imparted both here and nationally on Manufacturing Day, a day designed to highlight the nuts and bolts of 21st-century manufacturing and to manufacture some interest in the field among those who will soon be pondering their career options.
One point that is stressed on Manufacturing Day is that manufacturing is no longer what it might have been 50 or 100 years ago, when people – men, for the most part – could walk into a factory with few skills and land a job. Even as manufacturing is no longer the grubby and gloomy toil of yesteryear, it also places greater demands on brains and less on brawn. Robots, automation and 3-D printing are some of technologies deployed in manufacturing today.
“It’s not just a couple of guys with hacksaws and torches in a garage,” said Mark Beichner, AccuTrex’s chief operating officer. Based in Southpointe, AccuTrex makes, among other things, gaskets and shims of various types, brackets and fasteners.
Bringing students from the Washington and Chartiers-Houston school districts to AccuTrex could help the company and others like it fill vacancies in their workforce in the years ahead. Perhaps the most pressing problem manufacturers face, both in this region and elsewhere, is a shortage of skilled labor. Over the last several decades, many students have pursued careers that require a college degree because they and their guardians believe having that credential will lead to a middle-class life. As Beichner told the students, “You’ve been sold a bill of goods that if you get your hands dirty at work, you’re worthless.”
Washington High School teacher Rocky Plassio accompanied some of his students as they toured AccuTrex’s facility, and noted that many of them have expressed uncertainty about what they want to do once they graduate, and “they can come here and learn and keep their options open.”