We’ve heard the statistics from Deloitte, ManpowerGroup, and the Manufacturing Institute:

• Close to a quarter of today’s manufacturing workforce will retire within a decade.
• 5 MILLION jobs could go unfilled.
• Close to 8 in 10 Manufacturing leaders believe that the skills gap will impact the ability to modernize and improve production.

So how can you get ahead of this forecast?

• In order to compete in the increasingly competitive job market or to accelerate within your current role, you will need to add to your automation skills with validated and certificate training programs.

• Certifications have been a mainstay in the IT world for decades. Industry leaders such as Microsoft and Cisco offer tiers of certifications that have been tightly aligned to job roles or career bands. Hundreds of thousands of professionals have attained these validations for their training.

• This trend for certifications is now expanding within the industrial automation skills space. Training is a key part of any job, but ensuring that you or your staff can be the subject matter experts on a given software, hardware, safety, or infrastructure, can help any organization deploy the right people and focus on staying productive.

But why does it have to be a certificate program?

• Specifically designed coursework can increase the value of your workforce to provide capabilities over those without certified capabilities and improve opportunities for hire or advancement.

• Organizations that support their workforce training typically experience greater job satisfaction. And certificates or certifications can increase the confidence and assurances that the development and delivery of your application will be valid and appropriate.

• When you are looking for training courses, make sure to investigate if the company offering the training offers a path to a certificate or certification. SMC offers many certified training programs from with the cooperation of Rockwell Automation, OSHA and an in-house TUV Rheinland Engineer. 

Typically there’s a test that is required to pass to achieve the certificate or certification, and what are the requirements for maintaining the certificate or certification.

Look through SMC's programs for courses ranging from beginner to more advanced certificates and certifications. SMC Training Courses are lead by industry experts within the field or topic of the training.

When it comes to meeting the needs of the future workforce, expect to be asked to “show what you know” and with the right training programs, it will be very easy to do so.