The Challenges of Attracting Young Workers to Manufacturing: Automating Processes vs. Complex System Management

The lack of young people requires companies to invest a lot in automating processes. However, there are also problems here – there is a lack of people who can manage complex systems.

Therefore, manufacturers are looking for ways to attract more workers – by financing educational programs, locating factories in rural areas. However, the disadvantage here is the long distance to ports and logistics centers.

Kristina Chen, manager of the furniture company “Acacia Woodcaft”, says that the company’s production plant was previously in China, but now the production has been moved to a rural area of ​​Vietnam. She turned down the opportunity to set up a factory in the industrial district of Ho Chi Minh City, given the experience of other entrepreneurs with endless turnover of employees and the need to constantly raise wages.

Chen revealed that her factory that supplies furniture to the United States now has people in their 40s and 50s, and some of them can’t read, so you need to present the work yourself and explain it in detail. These employees are a stable value. She points out that she respects young people who can read and wants young people to be more involved in making various decisions.

In 2001, Nike announced that more than 80% of the company’s factories were located in Asia. At the time, the typical worker was 22 years old, single, and had grown up on a farm.

Today’s average Nike factory worker in China is 40 years old, and in Vietnam it is 31 years old. The reason is the rapid aging of the Asian society.

Nike’s partner, Maxport Limited Vietnam, which has been operating since 1995, has recently seen competition for workers. Maxport factories have large windows, a variety of plants, and a youth training program. It doesn’t help much though. The school graduate training program had to be closed because only a few people remained in work after its completion. Now about 90% of Maxport employees are over 30 years old.

According to Richard Jackson, director of Thai employment firm JacksonGrant, “factories have to either pay more for skills or sacrifice something.”

Young people from developing countries, who used to actively go to work in factories, are now increasingly working in other sectors, for example helping the elderly in developed countries. According to former factory workers, it is much more profitable to help the elderly in developed countries, because “no one is breathing down their necks and the boss is not asking them to work faster and harder.”

2023-08-10 21:01:00
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