What are experts saying about what the future will demand for manufacturing careers?
Robots, artificial intelligence and IoT will point the way to the answer to that question.
It’s all about advanced technology and training for higher-level skills, says the Brookings Institute in a new study released.
… [T]echnology is changing the comparative advantages that drive competitiveness. Developing countries’ comparative advantage in low-skill, low-labor-cost production is at risk as routine low-skill tasks are increasingly automated. New technologies are demanding higher-level skills, raising the capital intensity of production, elevating the importance of innovation ecosystems, and requiring strong digital infrastructure and readiness for manufacturers to be competitive.
Countries that currently possess or are investing actively in the skills, capital, and infrastructure of the future are the ones that will dominate global manufacturing in the years ahead.
The technological advances are making a huge difference in overhead, the study says, so much so, more and more factories are returning to locations where high wages made production less cost-prohibitive.
That’s all changing dramatically.
While technology is boosting productivity in today’s manufacturing hubs and largely offsetting rising wages, it is also reducing the cost of capital and slowing the need to offshore production toward lower-wage countries. In fact, there are emerging trends of reshoring in global manufacturing production back to some advanced economies. Beyond the changing labor and capital cost dynamics, other factors such as proximity to consumers, the supply of skilled labor, and ecosystem synergies are playing a role as drivers of reshoring.
Read the rest of the study at Brookings Institute website
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