Workforce Challenges in the Manufacturing Sector, with Jim Pursley, Factory Automation Systems
Jim Pursley: It’s still strong. We had some concerns about rising cost of money and economy slowing down.
But we’ve not seen it in a whole slug taking a downward turn just yet, always subject to change. And I think a lot of what’s driving that is still the strong employment numbers. Our business is structured around automation and helping people manufacture things in all types of spaces.
And, traditionally through the years that takes people to do that. And it’s harder and harder these days to find people that you could trust to show up to work every day that have the skills to do that. And especially in the manufacturing space. And so our customers, and the list keeps growing, from beyond the traditional Fortune 500 companies, to Fords and General Motors of the world to smaller organizations that just can’t find the people to do the work.
And so we get calls for “we’ve had this process we’ve done for years. We’re looking for a way to be able to do it. We can’t run the equipment sometimes because we don’t have people to show up to work to do it.” That’s been a big part of our continued success, whether that’s with robotic systems or just any other type of automation system.
And it continues to, to be even as large capital projects, maybe are slowing down. Even a lot of upgrade work with existing customers are taking the opportunities to replace obsolete equipment if they’ve slowed down. And even customers who aren’t seeing growth in their business in manufacturing still need the automation piece to drive costs down and to really backfill where you can’t find the labor.
Listen to Jim’s full ProfitSense with Bill McDermott interview here.
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