Manufacturing jobs are opening up across the state of Massachusetts, but the number of workers with the appropriate skills to fill these jobs is lagging, according to a new report from the Dukakis Center at Northeastern University. In 2007, a report from the Dukakis Center projected that more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs will open in Massachusetts over the next ten years. Last year, the number of manufacturing companies in Massachusetts increased for the first time in about a decade, and employment has remained steady for the past three years, according to an article from Boston Business Journal. While that’s all good news for the years ahead, the Center’s latest report, Staying Power II, found that more than 40% of manufacturers anticipate difficulty when it comes to recruiting skilled employees to fill those jobs.
As the article in Boston Business Journal notes, the state is launching several initiatives to promote manufacturing as a career and minimize the training gap. Manufacturing firms are also taking steps to ensure their survival; according to Staying Power II, the more than 8,000 manufacturing firms remaining in Massachusetts are “enterprises that for the most part had remained competitive by investing in advanced technologies that boosted productivity at prodigious rates and in the training of its labor force to take advantage of these new technologies” (Bluestone, et al., 3). Perhaps among these advanced technologies are enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, which can streamline processes and support functions such as human resources, finance, production, and inventory in a single, centralized platform. As the Manufacturing Industry of Massachusetts grow, they will discover a greater need for improved ERP systems capable of sustaining that growth in order to compete with other manufacturers nationally and globally.
GraVoc has significant experience in implementing and customizing ERP systems for manufacturing firms throughout the United States. We feel that companies of any size can benefit from the right ERP software, and we are happy to consult with companies on a solution that meets the business’s unique requirements and specifications. Please visit www.gravoc.com to learn more.