Give Work A Chance: Reliability, too!
As North Carolina continues to transition from legacy industries of textile, furniture and regulated tobacco to new economic opportunities in other sectors, we need to realize a couple of critical issues and take advantage of opportunities to be a leader.
Maintenance is repairing equipment after a breakdown. Reliability is setting up initiatives that avoid breakdowns. Maintenance is expensive. Reliability makes money. Investing in growing reliability yields significant results and could be a huge differentiator if Davidson County grew an excess of reliability talent pools.
As our governmental leaders are being pressured to finance the conversion costs of converting bleeding edge ideas into cutting edge results, we need to also remember to polish the rusty edge. In other words, as we are funding bio-tech, nano-tech and other high end technologies, we need to not forget the existing technologies that support us today, like hydraulics, pneumatics, plc controlled systems and the newly implemented automation technologies.Many of our kids aren’t pursuing the education needed to replace the existing skilled maintenance technicians our national economies rely on.
If Davidson became known as the Reliability County, where we build and attract the best talented, skilled reliability technicians, existing companies would thrive and outsiders would want to join them and not have their hands out wanting large tax incentives.
We hope governmental and business leaders consider this simple but novel concept to ensure growth and economic stability in future years. Nucor, Egger, Mohawk and other industries constantly struggle to find qualified maintenance talent who can work with electrical, mechanical, electronic and automation technologies.
If Davidson-Davie Community College is able to expand their graduates in maintenance and technical skills, these graduates will quickly earn livable wages and help area companies grow.
We need more emphasis on the pursuit of the skilled trades, technical skills by education leaders, setting up more experiential education, skill competitions, more robotic, automation challenges, and perhaps hosting maintenance skills rodeos. We also need to encourage underserved communities to pick up these skills. If you visit the community colleges and see the maintenance, machining, and welding classes, you will see that there is a need to increase minority participation. We need more than just white males to do these jobs and if given a chance many women outperform men in these roles.
In order to succeed in the manufacturing renaissance, we need to conduct a complete cultural overhaul and increase area appreciation to become more reliable and grow our economic capacity levels!
We must give reliability a chance, too!
