Washington Business Winter 2020 | Washington Business | Página 44

business backgrounder | industry
And at nearby Orion Industries, manufacturing jobs (making award-
winning aerospace parts) are also a way for those with handicaps and
other barriers to employment to receive training in life skills.
As the state’s manufacturing association, AWB works to support and
celebrate Washington’s employers and the employees who build, create,
grow and innovate.
Each autumn, in conjunction with national Manufacturing Day, AWB
takes that support on the road in a brightly wrapped tour bus to visit
some of Washington’s 7,600 manufacturing sites.
This year’s tour covered 2,355 miles. News media took notice, with
television coverage in Seattle and Tri-Cities and stories in newspapers
and on radio stations across the state. Dozens of elected officials, from
members of Congress to legislators and local city mayors, took part in
the tours.
An important fact emerged on shop floors large and small: Our state
and manufacturing are tied together. The production of one area fuels the
productivity elsewhere.
That was on display in the Icicle Brewing Company in Leavenworth,
which uses Yakima Chief Hops, produced in Yakima. The tour stopped
at the very facility a few days later.
And at Stemilt Growers in Wenatchee, equipment in a huge new
cherry processing facility bears the name Colmac Coil — produced by
a company in Colville that AWB visited during the first Manufacturing
Week tour in 2017.
workforce challenges
Training and the need for a skilled workforce was another recurring and
ongoing theme.
David Honeycutt, senior director at Hewes Marine in Colville, which
employs 160 people, said the company is having an ever-harder time
finding workers.
“That’s our single biggest challenge now,” Honeycutt said.
At Greer Steel in Lakewood, General Manager Dave Kapla said he has
a hard time finding fabricators. Schools aren’t producing people with the
necessary skills, and fewer young people want to get their hands dirty.
Still, he has 22 skilled workers building everything from fuel tanks
bound for Alaska to handrails for Washington state ferries.
“I have a robot welder,” Kapla said. “I fired it. Works too slow. My guys
can weld circles around the robot.”
The workforce pipeline is a big part of the picture at places like Everett
Community College’s advanced Manufacturing Training & Education
Center (AMTEC).
AMTEC teaches engineering technology, welding, composites,
precision machining, mechatronics and other high-demand skills with
a mix of hands-on training and a 54,000-square-foot modern learning
environment. The program appeals to slightly older students who are
already in the working world; the average age of the 740 annual AMTEC
students is about 28 to 30 years old.
Mike Patching, a tenured faculty instructor in composites technology,
showed off some of the products in the composite clean room where his
students learn to manufacture, inspect and repair composites.
44 association of washington business