GALLERY: Morbark Hosts Manufacturing Day for Students
More than 130 area high school students, parents, school officials and other guests visited Morbark’s career-focused Manufacturing Day event Sept. 30 at the company’s Winn, Mich., headquarters. Titled “March Into your Future with Morbark,” the event featured a tour of Morbark’s factory as well as presentations by numerous employees explaining their duties and personal career paths in manufacturing.
Manufacturing Day, typically held on the first Friday in October, allows United States manufacturers to open their doors to demonstrate the potential of modern manufacturing and foster interest in the variety of manufacturing career opportunities available upon graduation from high school, trade schools or college.
“Today’s manufacturing is not your grandfather’s or even your father’s manufacturing,” said Morbark president Jim Shoemaker Jr. “Modern manufacturing is highly technical, requires a skilled labor force and provides well-paying careers with diverse opportunities for advancement. Manufacturing is vital to a strong national and local economy.”
Shoemaker added, however, that the country is facing a skills gap, with as many as 60 percent of skilled production positions in the U.S. going unfilled, with misconceptions about what manufacturing is.
“That’s why it’s important to have events like this, and show young adults, parents and school personnel what manufacturing is really like and what career opportunities exist in manufacturing,” said Shoemaker.
Morbark builds equipment in forestry, recycling, sawmill, bio-energy and tree-care markets with a full line of whole tree and waste wood chippers, flails, brush chippers, horizontal and tub grinders, and more.
About the Author
Michael Roth
Editor
Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.