Open houses will be held in Milwaukee, Mequon and Racine to celebrate Manufacturing Day, a national event being held for the first time this year on Friday, Oct. 5.
The day, produced by the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association, National Institute of Standards and Technology and National Association of Manufacturers, highlights the job opportunities available in the manufacturing field.
GenMet, a metal fabricator in Mequon, plans to host tours from noon to 6 p.m. The company has 75 employees but would like to have 90 employees, said President Mary Isbister.
She wants to encourage high school students, their counselors and their parents to explore the manufacturing career path.
“We’d like the whole community to come and see what manufacturing is because there’s so much unknown about it as well as some misconceptions,” Isbister said.
The field includes more than just shop floor jobs, she said. There are opportunities for engineering, purchasing, estimating, maintenance and operations management as well.
“There are careers for men and women and a wide variety of things—and frankly, we need them all,” Isbister said.
Super Steel in Milwaukee will host a facility tour and presentation from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Reed Switch Developments Corp. in Racine will lead tours and presentations from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
There are more than 50 events being held for Manufacturing Day in the U.S. and Canada, said Ed Youdell, president and CEO of FMA.
“Manufacturing is incredibly important to the vitality of the U.S. economy,” he said. “One of the challenges for manufacturing is to improve the image of manufacturing as a viable career option.”
There are about 12 million manufacturing jobs nationwide, and about 18 million people have jobs related to manufacturing. The U.S. produces 21 percent of the world’s manufactured products, more than both China and Japan, according to NAM.
