Composites Executive Forum Highlights Recycling and Workforce Development

Two of the most widely discussed issues in the composites industry are how to make materials more recyclable and how to attract and train a more qualified workforce. During ACMA’s Composites Executive Forum, leaders from all over the industry were able to hear about the industry’s progress in recycling and workforce development, as well as the challenges that lie ahead. For recycling, one of the biggest challenges is figuring out the business case. “How are we going to make it profitable to recycle glass fiber? How can we make it? If you are talking about electronics, you have to harvest the right materials,” said Soydan Ozcan, PhD., Scientist, Composites and Additive Manufacturing at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “It's not only just recovering one glass and using some of it. I think the technology needs to be specific to the business practice.” David L. Wagger, Ph.D., Chief Scientist and Director of Environmental Management at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), agrees that recycling should be driven by market forces. “That sounds really simple, but actually it's really hard to practice,” said Wagger. “The thing that this presupposes is there is material available that has value, there is a way to move it and process it into another valuable material that has an end use market. That's the challenge. To have all of those things line up for the variety of materials that may have a second or a third useful life and so on.” Ed Pilpel, President of PolyStrand and Chairman of ACMA’s Green Composites Council said that while difficult, there is something everyone in the industry could do. “Everyone in this room that produces could avoid that landfill cost as a start,” said Pilpel. “What we learned from ISRI is once you have that baseline of energy conversion, that it helps you get started, be in the business, get some value back. Now you can get a few more dollars out of it.” In workforce development, the challenges are even greater. Josh Cramer, Senior Educational Programs Officer at SME, said that while visiting Pittsburgh, he learned that even if 100 percent of the city’s high school graduates entered the workforce, manufacturers are still short 20,000 employees. “It’s not even one of those things where if you build it, they will come,” Cramer said. “It’s just ‘we need them there.’” Many in the industry believe that is due to manufacturing’s image problem. Brent Weil, Senior Vice President of the National Association of Manufacturers, explained that while many Americans believe in the value of manufacturing to the country, many parents do not want their kids pursuing careers in it. Weil added that the two biggest factors driving career choices for young professionals are personal experiences and parental influence. Cramer believes that problem is largely due to the ambiguity surrounding the field as a whole. “’What is manufacturing?’ Everyone has such a different concept,” Cramer says. “Most students can’t answer that question.” Cramer said that SME is combating that problem through its Education Foundation’s Partnership Response In Manufacturing (PRIME®) initiative, which engages and builds a network between students, educators and industry to grow and train the next generation workforce while driving interest and awareness in manufacturing. The program emphasizes the importance of building specific, tailored engagement points, from hourly employees all the way up to executives, so people can get a sense of the manufacturing environment. According to Cramer, when those students graduate from the program, about 84 percent of them end up working in manufacturing. He says that due to demand, the program is aiming to grow from 12,000 students per year to 25,000 students per year. “Our goal is to create a student who has more than a high school diploma,” said Cramer. “We want to make sure they’re credentialed and that credential means something and it’s matched up with a company that says ‘I want that credential, I know what it means, and it’s a benchmark for us.’” Mary Ann Pacelli, Program Manager, Workforce Development at the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership, added that there’s a lot of small businesses themselves can do as well, including creating a workforce development plan. However, many small businesses don’t have the resources to do that. “That’s when you need to engage with other people in your community,” said Pacelli. “You find other companies that have life skills that have life needs and [figure out] how do you work together to build that pipeline of workforce and build the skills within your facility so that you can share in the developing and paying ... the financial investment that needs to happen.”