The President of AMT - The Association for Manufacturing Technology, Doug Woods, sent out a link to a GREAT CNN video by Tony Harris titled "The New Face of Blue Collar Workers".

The video highlights a company in Greenville, SC called ADEX Machining Technologies, LLC

What is extremely impressive about ADEX is the new position they created. Traditionally, you have CNC programmers and machinists which are separate positions. Adex has created a hybrid role where employees must be accomplished CNC programmers AND skilled machinists. The CNN video interviews a number of Adex employees. Each employee make it very clear that, by wearing both hats, it gives them the satisfaction of both designing parts and then actually creating the part.

One of the Adex founders made the statement that for each open position they had 100 applicants who applied. They still had great difficulty finding qualified employees. The reason is the need for the combined skill set. As technologies such as MTConnect greatly improve machine tool efficiency, this new hybrid position will become the norm and not the exception. It is very, very cool to see this rebirth of manufacturing. As the video indicated, this might be exactly what manufacturing needs to bring the young, gamer generation into manufacturing.

This is not your father's manufacturing industry anymore. This really is the new face of blue collar workers. Also, these new workers are making $50,000 to $80,000 in South Carolina.