The National Association of Manufacturers has pledged to promote the Department of Labor's new model of cross-cutting skills viewed as essential for a career in advanced manufacturing.
“The NAM is proud to have played a key role in developing this ground-breaking framework of core competencies critical for today’s high performance manufacturing worker,” said NAM President John Engler. “The framework provides a long overdue snapshot of what the 21st century manufacturing technical worker looks like. We will take a leadership role to promote this new model of industry-wide skill requirements with our member companies, affiliated associations and educators and work with industry partners to keep it current as the skill requirements of manufacturers change.”
He said the framework does not replace sector-specific manufacturing association skills standards but provides a foundation of core skills needed across-the-board to be a high performance worker in today’s advanced manufacturing. These skills range from personal effectiveness competencies such as integrity and motivation to technical competencies such as working with spreadsheets, interpreting CAD and navigating databases.