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By Joe Boomgaard | MiBiz
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DEARBORN — Look at any car dealer lot and it’s not a stretch of the imagination to say that the shiny new automobiles are different than they were a decade ago — even a year ago.

As a percentage, very few vehicles on the road today use some sort of electrified powertrain. For instance, Nancy Gioia, director of electrification at Ford Motor Co., said only 1 percent of the company’s new vehicles sold today are hybrids or electric vehicles. By 2020, Ford expects that segment will account for between 10-25 percent of its sales, and 75 percent of electrified vehicles will be hybrids because they have the “lowest cost and highest value proposition to customers,” Gioia told an audience of automotive industry insiders and education leaders gathered at the Ford Conference and Convention Center in Dearborn. They were there in early May for the Driving Change: Greening the Automotive Workforce Conference.

The conference was sponsored by a tri-state consortium including the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget, Indiana Workforce Development, and the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, as well as the U.S. Department of Labor and research partners Indiana University, Case Western Reserve University, and the Ann Arbor’s Center for Automotive Research (CAR).

The rate of adoption of electrified technologies isn’t happening soon enough for some people, yet the industry is butting up against an interesting challenge. After a decade of decline, the industry wants to hire people, but it’s running into a problem in finding people with the skills it needs.

“Electrification has been a slow and steady journey, but we see it coming. We have to invest in installed capacity for R&D,” Gioia said. “Ford has been recruiting engineers, but there’s a shortage of people with the right skill set. … We need to re-excite people to enter the automotive industry.”

A 2010 Manufacturing Institute study about the public’s view of manufacturing — cited by Sue G. Smith, corporate executive for manufacturing technology, workforce and economic development at Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana — found that while 68 percent of people think manufacturing is a strong base for the U.S. economy and 63 percent agree that manufacturing is now a high-tech industry, only 30 percent of people would encourage someone to consider manufacturing as a career choice.

New recruits should be forgiven if they are gun-shy of going into the industry. It shed hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country, and nowhere was as hard hit as Michigan. Kristin Dziczek, director of the labor and industry group at CAR, said Michigan lost 60 percent of its auto and auto parts supply chain jobs.

“Even as production recovers, it may take a very long while before employment recovers, if it does,” Dziczek said. “The auto industry will not be able to absorb all the people who’ve been displaced. There are four job seekers for every job opening in Michigan.”

CAR predicts a “relatively quick recovery” for automotive sector employment. Coming off a 2010 low of 157,000 auto-related jobs in Michigan, CAR predicts a steady rise in jobs over the next few years, peaking in 2015 at just over 199,000 and falling back to 191,000 by 2020.

The conference highlighted a report from the conference sponsors that changes in automotive technology — in the powertrain, materials and software controls — mandate that workers be trained or retrained to have the skills that employers need them to have to be competitive in the global automotive market.

“The U.S. auto supply chain could prosper by adopting a ‘high-road’ production approach in which firms, their employees and suppliers work together to optimize investment, labor, quality and technology development,” the report stated. “…(A)dopting high-road production requires everyone in the value chain be willing and able to share knowledge.”

With the switch to the new technologies, the report and the conference speakers argued that auto jobs must be defined and accepted as green jobs, with the realization that employees may have skills gaps and could require some help to “up-skill” to the demands of new green auto jobs.

But despite this need for an educated workforce, companies don’t seem to want to put their money where their mouth is. Smith said manufacturers she deals with in Indiana “say they value education, but they are not willing to pay entry level employees for demonstrated skills. This will bring significant challenges. They demand critical thinking, problem solving and teamwork skills, but they’re unsure how to get them (and) they are not willing to fund employee training.”

But that’s not necessarily the case in West Michigan, said Bruce Adair, director of business services for Lakeshore Advantage, who attended the conference. His organization does a regular survey of local employers, and he said the data show they’re not only spending money on training, but also that funding has remained constant throughout the economic downturn.

“The quality of our workforce in West Michigan is what sets us apart … (but) we need to provide them with the skills they need that will ensure their success,” Adair told MiBiz. “Our employers want well-rounded engineers (who are) adaptable.

“We need our institutions to think hard about the new industry that’s landed on our shores,” he said, referring to the advanced energy storage industry that’s online or coming online in West Michigan. “But educators are not rapid change, and we need rapid change.”

That being said, Adair credited Grand Rapids Community College and Grand Valley State University for moving quickly to serve the new advanced battery industry and to develop new expertise and curricula to meet companies’ needs.

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• bruce adair
• dearborn
• driving change: greening the automotive workforce conference
• ford motor co
• kristin dziczek
• manufacturing institute
• nancy gioia
• sue g. smith