Vocational education was once used to track low-income students off to work while wealthier kids went to college. But today’s career and technical education have changed, and graduates of vocational programs may have the advantage over graduates of traditional high schools.
There are Vocational schools for electricians, plumbers, CAD professionals, airplane mechanics and a host of other skilled labor jobs, there are no schools for the skills needed in today’s labor-strapped modular housing factory production lines.
74 percent of executives at U.S. manufacturing companies say a shortage of workers for skilled production jobs is having a significant impact on their company’s ability to expand operations or improve productivity. It’s estimated that as many as 600,000 skilled manufacturing jobs were going unfilled because of a lack of qualified workers.
“We can’t just go out and throw up some ads and hire some skilled people. They’re not out there.” –Dennis Dio Parker, Toyota North America.
The modular housing industry is definitely not as big as Toyota which uses the Advanced Manufacturing Technician (AMT) Program in Kentucky is a partnership between Toyota Motor Manufacturing and Bluegrass Community and Technical College but we can begin the same type of program on a smaller scale.
In areas where there is concentrated modular and manufactured factories, the industry could work regionally with small state colleges to provide a couple of weeks or months of training in specific stations found in all the factories.
The factories would collectively contribute financially to support these regional programs with the graduates being offered employment at one of the participating factories.
Young people, Vets and others wanting to reenter the workforce would be given the chance to have a paying skilled job upon “graduating”.
Sharing the cost of developing skilled workers for our industry is about the only way these colleges or trade schools will take on this project but the rewards could be huge.
It seems so simple in theory but the reality has always been getting modular and manufacturing companies to sit down and actually figure out how to implement it.
The Modcoach writes the Modcoach News, Modular Home Coach and Off-Site Construction News blogs. Modcoach Connects matches Consultants with Clients. 
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