Report 2019: Skills for the Future of Manufacturing

The 2019 World Manufacturing Forum Report: Skills for the Future of Manufacturing is a whitepaper that explores in detail the skills gap phenomenon widely felt in the manufacturing sector, identify the top skills needed by manufacturing workers, outline the main mechanisms in skills assessments and development, and finally propose key recommendations to promote an educated and skilled manufacturing workforce. The 2019 Report was developed by collaborating with an international group of 50 experts from over 20 countries.

The rapid proliferation of new technologies has and will continue to transform roles within manufacturing. This section will outline examples of roles that the WMF believes would increase in importance in the future. While the list of emerging roles is not exhaustive, the following examples show that the advent of Industry 4.0 is not only augmenting the nature of existing manufacturing roles such as lean managers but also leading to the creation of completely new roles such as collaborative robot experts and industrial big data scientists. It is therefore imperative that educators and training providers ensure that there is adequate training to prepare workers for these emerging roles increasingly required by the job market. Companies equally should place emphasis on transition opportunities for existing workers to take on new or augmented roles within the organisation, providing the workforce education and training programmes needed to support such transition.