The problem is there is no pipeline to get people into these highly automated levels of manufacturing. How can you learn about all the steps and how they’re done “manually” and all that, to be able to participate in the high end of manufacturing? It feels like an island. And once the current talent retires it may leave a void even for those highly advanced factories.
I'm split on this. Tradesmen that came up through their apprenticeship say that people need to learn the old manual machines to "feel what the machine is doing", before you can move over to computer controlled machines. But I think that is just the tendency of people to say the path to their current location is the path they took. Not that another path isn't actually a better way to get there for the current environment.
I also think there has been a bit of bias in trade schools towards learning manual processes because it is cheap. You can have a room full of students spend weeks learning to use a file to shape a small block of steel to precise dimensions. A $5 file and $10 of material is easier to supply than a $1XX,XXX computerize manufacturing machine that can process $XXX of material or more per day. But spending weeks to learn how to precision hand file is pretty well a waste of time for modern manufacturing.
You can't improve to N+1 if you don't know N, is the history of technology. You don't have to start at N-25 though, there is a base level to start at that cuts out your enemy.
