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Industry Outlook: Advanced Manufacturing
NEEDED:
WORKERS
WITH
TECHNICAL SKILLS
BY DAVID LEVINE
Peekskill-based Bantam Tools makes computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools in desktop sizes. At top: Bantam Tools’ Peter Riley with a chess knight milled on the company’s Desktop CNC Milling Machine. Above: Precision assembly of the Desktop CNC Milling Machine.
Technology has changed just about every industry, and manufacturing is definitely one of them. There is even a term
for the industries in this sector that have been transformed by automation, computation, sensing, and other tech processes: advanced manufacturing.
Westchester County is a leading center of this new wave of innovation. The county’s Economic Development Office, which runs an Advanced Manufacturing Industry Desk, reports that Westchester “is home to a diverse advanced manufacturing industry that produces everything from package inspection equipment and plastic fluid handling products to circuit boards and aluminum parts.” The industry is well served here by 28 higher education institutions and public schools, which teach and train the highly skilled workers needed for this growing sector; by numerous commercial real estate opportunities for digitized, specialized and cleaner manufacturing processes; and, of course, by its proximity to New
York City, the Port of New York and New Jersey, and the many local airports and freight rail depots.
The inside joke, says Harold King, is that if you are manufacturing anything in the Hudson Valley, you are now advanced. “Particularly in Westchester,” adds King, who is president of the Council of Industry, an association
of manufacturers. “The short answer is, every manufacturer is using some technology to make their product.”
With this rapid growth come challenges, most noticeably in workforce development. This has been an ongoing issue for at least 10 years, he says, and the pandemic and “Great Resignation” have only accelerated
the problem. Much of that is blamed
on the shift of the country’s focus from manufacturing to a service economy. “People were not going into trades
in the 1990s and 2000s as we de- emphasized technical education,” King says. “Now that has changed. There
are great programs, but they are not keeping up with retirement and growth in industry.” As a result, there is a wide age gap among workers: “There are lots
18 2022 SKILLS
What’s Hot. What’s Next. What’s Needed.
© Courtesy of Bantam Tools
© Courtesy of Bantam Tools