SPRING 2022

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THE DISTRIBUTOR’S LINK
Jo Morris Marketing Director
FASTENER TRAINING INSTITUTE ® CONTINUED ON PAGE 114
Dan Walker Managing Director
INDUSTRIAL FASTENERS INSTITUTE ®
THE POWER OF ASSOCIATIONS AND EDUCATION
TO CONNECT THE SKILLS AND LABOR GAP
A Workforce Under Transformation
We’ve all experienced it. Workers have been leaving
the workforce in record numbers. At the end of 2021,
our economy was left with nearly 11 million unfilled
positions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Access to skilled and educated workers is critical to the
success and competitiveness of companies. This chasm
between positions needing to be filled and access to
skilled labor, along with supply chain shifts due to COVID,
left manufacturers seeking new ways to ensure business
continuity.
Manufacturers that had slowly been embracing digital
transformation were accelerating the implementation of AI
technology, improved automation and analytics ushering
in the era of “manufacturing 4.0” In fact, 95 percent
of companies responding to the FICTIV 2021 State of
Manufacturing Report indicated that digital transformation
has become essential to their company’s future success.
These companies have been quick to point out,
however, that this digital transformation has not been
undertaken to replace the workforce. The technologies
and intelligence brought about via manufacturing 4.0 are
intended to augment the capability of an improved, skilled
workforce.
But this embrace of digital transformation is
not undertaken to replace the workforce, this digital
transformation is intended to augment the capability
of an improved, upskilled workforce that will increase
competitiveness and optimize productivity. To fully
leverage these increased capabilities through digital
transformation, manufacturers are examining ways to fill
the need for skilled labor.
Manufacturers are actively looking at ways to
upskill, cross-train and educate a workforce needed to
advance and leverage the new capabilities. The reality
is that individual companies simply cannot shoulder
workforce development for an entire industry on their own.
Workforce development is an industry-wide issue, but not
something that can be solved for all of manufacturing.
Workforce development must be approached with a deep
understanding of industry issues and technology, while
broad enough to be impactful across the broad array of
differentiated companies.
Enter Trade Associations
Trade associations are knowledge centers for entire
industries, dealing with broad, industry-wide issues, like
trade, infrastructure, policy, specifications, and market
development. By dealing with common issues that face an
industry, these associations enable individual companies
to focus on core business competencies and proprietary
differences.
As broad-based experts on an industry, trade
associations are also an ideal focus factory for developing
a skilled workforce, as is the case with our fastener
industry. As a mature industry, we are fortunate to
have established partners through key associations like
the Industrial Fasteners Institute (IFI) and the Fastener
Training Institute (FTI). While different in membership and
purpose, the IFI and FTI are closely aligned on providing
critical industry education to advance the workforce and
address growing skills gaps.
TECHNICAL ARTICLE