Will Millennials Change the Manufacturing Industry?

People who want to keep millennials away from the manufacturing industries portray a negative image of manufacturing factories to ensure that millennials seek out white-collar jobs and stay clear of the industry. However, despite all that, some millennials have shown a great deal of interest towards the manufacturing industry.

Millennials Poised to Change the Industry

The experienced workers from the baby boomers generation are retiring and millennials will soon become the biggest available workforce throughout the world. Should this be considered a threat? No! An opportunity? Definitely.

Innovations like automated production line and high-tech robots are increasingly becoming common in manufacturing plants. This provides a great opportunity to manufacturing companies who can benefit from employing tech savvy millennials. Millennials have grown up interacting with high-tech devices and applications and are quick to adapt to the latest innovations.

Millennials prefer jobs in the manufacturing industries where technologic components are employed. If they are working in a manufacturing plant, they’d prefer to control a servo-robot than carry out repetitive tasks like placing bottles on a production line. Therefore, companies need to consider how they will attract millennials towards the manufacturing industry. One way manufacturers can attract them is by introducing automation and robotics in their facilities.

This is an ideal way to appeal to the interest of millennials and bring them to the manufacturing industry. That is because the introduction of automation creates new positions with a higher value that are more attractive to the tech-savvy generation. Australian companies that wish to handle the shortage of workers in the future should invest in automation so that they can employ millennial workers.

The phenomenon isn’t just affecting Australia. Manufacturing firms in countries like India, Thailand, Brazil, and China are also feeling the effect of the millennial generation. They are trying to adapt automation and make radical changes to attract millennials.

In the past few years, several studies have reported that manufacturing jobs aren’t the most attractive ones for millennials. The main reason is that millennials don’t think that the manufacturing industry can offer them a high-tech working environment. When they think about the industry, they imagine a dangerous environment with physically demanding jobs. However, as automation enters manufacturing plants, there’ll be several jobs in robotics, engineering, IT and research and development awaiting millennials.

Some companies have made plans to address the challenge of retiring baby boomers leaving the workforce. However, many manufacturers don’t have any idea about how they’ll replace their old age workers. A few of them believe that the introduction of automation and robotics will take jobs away from many workers. However, the reality is quite opposite. Introduction of automation and robotics for repetitive tasks will allow companies to attract millennial workers and also reduces their workload.

The constantly changing manufacturing sector offers great promise to millennials. However, manufacturing companies face a major challenge of introducing automation and adapting to maintain a strong position in the industry. Introduction of automation in manufacturing plants will not only attract millennials but also allow machines to collaborate with humans to make their work easier.