John Rauschenberger of Ford Motor Co. (Dearborn, MI) has seen the writing on the wall. The future imperative for Ford's workforce -- like that of every other U.S. manufacturer -- will be to do more with less. As the wave of baby boomer retirements intensifies, the U.S. workforce will lose millions of employees, and price pressures from low-cost labor centers offshore are not expected to abate anytime soon.

So, Rauschenberger is thinking ahead. Though the $171 billion automaker is not currently experiencing major shortages, Rauschenberger isn't sitting idly by.

"We have to be more productive, and the way to do that is to have smarter people using good technology. That's the only way you can compete against cheaper, unskilled labor," says Rauschenberger, manager of personnel research and development for Ford. His professional mission is to ensure that Ford's workers will have the advanced skills they need to thrive throughout this century.

Toward that end, Rauschenberger has spent the past seven years working on creating skills assessments and a certification program for production workers with the Manufacturing Skills Standards Council (MSSC) of the Washington, DC-based National Council for Advanced Manufacturing (NACFAM). The MSSC certification system was finalized last November and 44 assessment centers nationwide have so far been certified to administer the program.

A Long Road to Mastery

In December, Rauschenberger presented the program, which includes four modules in foundational skills for production personnel, to Ford managers in Grand Rapids, MI. He has high hopes that the company will embrace the MSSC program over time, both as a way of giving its production workers desperately needed credentials and as a way to ensure that Ford will have the skills it needs for the foreseeable future.

"We are just starting. The effort [to create a certification program for production workers] is seven years old and yet absolutely brand new. We are trying to get some momentum going. It doesn't just happen by itself and it doesn't happen overnight," Rauschenberger says.

Although Ford is not currently experiencing significant labor shortages in skilled production workers, many manufacturers are. According to the 2005 Skills Gap Report sponsored by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and Deloitte, 90% of the 815 NAM members surveyed indicated a "moderate to severe" shortage of qualified skilled production workers, with 83% reporting that the shortages are hurting their ability to serve customers. Nearly half said their current employees had inadequate problem-solving skills.

For the first time in the survey, manufacturers cited a "high-performance workforce" as the top driver for business success. Unfortunately, most manufacturers are not ready, willing, or able to put enough resources behind training to get that workforce where it needs to be. "There is a very serious gap between what manufacturers see as their success in the future and how they are supporting that success around training and development," says Stacey Jarrett Wagner, director of workforce initiatives for the Center for Workforce Success, NAM's research arm.

Steps to Take