OSD ManTech M-EWD: Building Tomorrow’s Manufacturing Workforce

The OSD ManTech Manufacturing Education and Workforce Development (M-EWD) team plays an integral role in creating a bridge between technology innovators and those responsible for training and educating the current and future manufacturing workforce. The M-EWD team, through its position within the Department of Defense, has a whole-system view to convene and coordinate stakeholders to better align emerging technology and talent development, linking and leveraging learning methodologies, technological resources, and subject-matter experts to develop collaborative, scalable workforce solutions that enhance the capabilities of the U.S. workforce.

The Mission of OSD ManTech M-EWD is to work through stakeholders to build an educated and skilled advanced manufacturing workforce that is prepared to meet the needs of an advanced technology-enabled manufacturing sector.

Empowering America's Advanced Manufacturing Workforce

DoD Manufacturing Technology Program

March 28, 2022 | By Courtesy

Criticality of Mission

In Action

EWD Brochure

Successes

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Criticality of Mission
In the U.S., manufacturing companies of all sizes and from all industry sectors share a pressing challenge – finding enough appropriately educated and skilled workers to fill available jobs. As reported by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute who have been tracking the skills shortage for the past 19 years:
- As many as 2.1M manufacturing positions (53 out of every 100 jobs) are expected to go unfilled through 2030 because of a shortage of skilled workers.
- Should this skills shortage persist, the U.S. risks losing $2.5T in economic output over the next decade.
- Demand for workers with advanced technology knowledge and skills is rapidly increasing due to expanded use of these new technologies. Research suggests that through 2030, workers can expect tasks requiring advanced technological skills to increase by 50 percent in the United States.
- Currently, the U.S. is not keeping up with its global competitors in addressing this challenge, ranking only ninth in the world for its workforce readiness to adapt to increased workplace automation.
The Department needs a resilient industrial base and workforce with advanced manufacturing skills to be globally competitive, enable technology modernization, and rapidly field weapons systems for a ready and dominant military force. The problem is a breakdown between education/training structures and a lag in numbers of advanced manufacturing-skilled workers. COVID-19 has exacerbated this problem, erasing approximately 1.4M U.S. manufacturing jobs and undoing more than a decade of manufacturing job gains (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). Without an appropriately skilled and capable workforce, the Nation will be handicapped competitively, and national defense and economic security will be at risk.

Additional statistics are available here: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Manufacturing Institute, Deloitte, and The Economic Policy Institute.

About EWD Initiatives
Strategy
Success Stories

ManTech EWD is leading multiple initiatives to build a skilled and capable advanced manufacturing workforce. Key to this work are the Manufacturing Innovation Institutes (MIIs). Each institute, in its role as innovator developing and disseminating new cutting-edge technologies, plays a unique and critical role in connecting and aligning industry, education, and regional stakeholders.

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The U.S. manufacturing and defense industrial base supports economic prosperity and global competitiveness and arms the U.S. military with capabilities to defend the Nation. The industrial base currently faces an unprecedented set of challenges, perhaps most notably a domestic workforce that lacks advanced manufacturing skills. Our Nation must systematically address these issues, requiring a new strategy of collaboration across multiple organizations and stakeholder groups. Many of these groups have been individually pursuing important but disconnected strategies. The challenge facing the Nation is a complex "system of systems" challenge that requires collaborating to develop and execute shared strategies to affect greater impact on an accelerated timetable. These organizations include three networks:

DoD MIIs and Manufacturing USA;
DoD’s Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation (formerly known as the “Office of Economic Adjustment”), Defense Industry Adjustment Program’s Learning Community Exchange; and
The American Manufacturing Communities Collaborative (formerly known as the “Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership” under the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration) now operating as a private sector collaborative.

This initiative will align the efforts of these three networks, and potentially others, is to collaboratively address the need for an educated and skilled American workforce capable of employing cutting-edge industrial technology at scale to revitalize the domestic manufacturing industry.
The overarching goal of this collaborative initiative is to create a larger, louder, and more influential voice to help drive policy, investments, and practice to address the skills gap in advanced manufacturing. This can only be achieved by taking a systems-of-systems view toward building an educated and skilled manufacturing workforce, strengthening and supporting the manufacturing and defense-connected communities, and increasing supply chain resiliency – all shared goals of the three national networks.

Leading Manufacturing Talent Development Innovations within Regional Economies Initiative

Nationwide, the advanced manufacturing industrial sector faces dual workforce challenges:

Addressing a current skills gap in order to fill existing and near-term job openings; and
Developing a workforce pipeline that is equipped with the skills and competencies needed to support future technological advances.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense Manufacturing Technology (OSD ManTech) Education and Workforce Development (EWD) team works in partnership with Department of Defense Manufacturing Innovation Institutes (DoD MIIs) who have been designing and implementing educational programs for several years to address this challenge. The institutes, as key drivers of both technology innovation and supportive education and workforce development for the advanced manufacturing industry, lead and develop regional strategies to solve manufacturers’ workforce challenges. Together, these initiatives are known as “Moving from Programs to Strategies through Career and Technical Education.”
The U.S. education systems are highly decentralized, with investments and policies driven at the state and local level. Through the "Moving from Programs to Strategies" initiative, the institutes convene stakeholders within regional economies including, but not limited to, manufacturers, regional economic and workforce boards, local government and school systems, and universities, community colleges and technical schools.

The focus of these regional initiatives is to first understand current and upcoming skills needs of local manufacturing employers and then form effective learning pathways that meet these localized workforce needs. The goal of this initiative is 1) to drive localized economic value through talent development and 2) to create opportunities for students of all ages and backgrounds to pursue fulfilling and prosperous careers.

This initiative begins with select regions to build and refine a framework and toolset for regional action. This framework and toolset include the program’s vision, approach, and processes necessary to build both a regional-based workforce educated and skilled in the technologies demanded by the local manufacturing sector, as well as an approach that can be scaled and guide implementation in other regions across the Nation.