Manufacturers continue to find themselves stuck with labor shortage challenges they can’t seem to escape. But given the current state of unemployment, a considerably low 3.4% as of January 2023, this shouldn’t be the case.
So then where are the workers? The reality is the workers are here, but they don’t have the baseline skills necessary to fulfill the positions required by manufacturers.
This skills gap crisis has haunted U.S. manufacturing for some years now. It’s a growing trend that has resulted in a labor shortage, which unfortunately isn’t going away anytime soon.
In fact, US manufacturing is expected to have 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030, according to a recent study by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute.
So, the arduous task of finding workers is getting increasingly more difficult. Which means even in the unlikely case that companies do manage to grab hold of the kinds of skilled labor they need for today, the workers they will need for tomorrow will be even more scarce.
To make things worse, the increasing demand for higher throughput or tighter production schedules is putting unwavering stress on manufacturers.
As a result, companies who choose to pursue the route of seeking out new skilled labor will risk wasting countless dollars fishing for labor in an ever-increasing pool of scarcity.
What can manufacturers do instead? First, we need to rethink the way we use human labor to begin with and ask ourselves, “is this type of work really best suited to a human in the first place?”
In many ways, the methods by which we utilize human labor are outdated. The work is often too slow, strenuous, and outright unsafe. To overcome these pressures, manufacturers should consider incorporating new technology, such as packaging automation, into their production.
The benefits of packaging automation technology simply outperforms the labor it replaces in nearly all aspects. Today’s machines are much safer, have faster throughput, and are less expensive in the long term. Manufacturers who adopt automated packaging machinery benefit from a more efficient production and safer work environment for their employees.
Even better, manufacturers can use the new technology to upskill current employees for future innovations as well as retask other employees to more important jobs upstream.
Automated packaging machinery has come a long way even in just the last two decades. As more companies implement automated machinery into their production the technology has become increasingly more advanced (highly efficient), while the cost of the given technology has decreased.
This means after a simple cost analysis of the true cost of labor vs the cost of automation, packaging automation is a no-brainer. When companies consider the labor burden costs, combined with the salary/wage an employee earns, it becomes clear just how much money is being thrown away.
By welcoming the opportunity to automate more tasks involved in the manufacturing process, manufacturers can shift their reliance away from scarce manual labor and simultaneously reap the benefits of labor-saving packaging machinery.
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If you have questions or need help with packaging automation, get in touch with us today and we’ll work together to find the right solution for you.
To see our palletizers, case packers or other automated packaging machines by Allied Technology, check out our products page at allied-technology.com/products/.
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Sources:
Creating Pathways for Tomorrow’s Workforce Today
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/manufacturing/manufacturing-industry-diversity.html
The Looming Economic Challenge Most People Aren’t Aware of: StepStone Research Highlights Long-Term Global Labor Shortage is Underestimated
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220510006338/en/The-Looming-Economic-Challenge-Most-People-aren%E2%80%99t-Aware-of-StepStone-Research-Highlights-Long-Term-Global-Labor-Shortage-is-Underestimated
Number of People 75 and Older in the Labor Force is Expected to Grow 96.5 Percent by 2030
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/number-of-people-75-and-older-in-the-labor-force-is-expected-to-grow-96-5-percent-by-2030.htm
