Governor Announces Manufacturing Productivity, Workforce Preparation Grant

The Governor said the $500,000 investment will increase workforce competitiveness in Oregon.

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski Photo by: Tim King

(SALEM) - Governor Kulongoski has announced grants of $499,962 to strengthen partnerships in workforce training. The grants will go to the Northwest High Performance Enterprise Consortium to increase manufacturing productivity, cost savings, and workforce preparation.

“If given the right training, skills, and tools, our workers can compete with anyone in the world – but only if we invest to keep our workforce and economy competitive,” said the Governor. “This grant will help our manufacturing base, and send the message to workers that manufacturing jobs can mean a bright and prosperous future.”

Strengthening and diversifying Oregon’s manufacturing base has been a priority for the Governor. The state’s key manufacturing industries—including high tech manufacturing, transportation equipment, metals, food processing, wood and paper products—employ a workforce of more than 150,000 and a payroll of approximately $8 billion dollars.

The strategic manufacturing plan helps grow the manufacturing sector and train Oregon workers to maximize productivity, innovation and global competitiveness. Last year, the Governor appointed a 12-member Manufacturing Workforce Committee to develop a strategy and action plan to work on these goals.

Key partners in the grant are: Worksystems, Inc. and the Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership. The partnership will help expand and connect the work of manufacturing coalitions around the state, such as Gateway Consortium, Manufacturing 21, RV Consortium, Semiconductor Workforce Consortium and others.

The first phase of Oregon’s Manufacturing Workforce Strategy focuses on three areas:

Competitive Workplaces: Support for the development of high-performance learning networks—consortia of manufacturers with a desire to “cooperate to compete” by learning and sharing strategies of lean manufacturing and other innovation-rich management and production methods. This will result in 20 – 30 additional Oregon companies engaging in high performance training.

Productive Workers: Ensuring a workforce—current and future—with the skills employers need to operate in high performance workplaces. Likely to impact 500 – 750 additional workers.

Manufacturing Communication: Promoting and/or organizing: (1) the importance of manufacturing to the state’s economy; (2) value of adopting high performance work practices in the workplace (3) opportunities for high-wage careers to potential workers.

“The single greatest challenge our members have is attracting a skilled workforce, and I appreciate the Governor’s leadership and work in investing in workforce productivity and preparation,” said Norm Eder, Executive Director of the Manufacturing 21 Coalition.

The strategy will build a pipeline of highly skilled workers for the estimated 50,000 - 60,000 manufacturing job openings across economic clusters in the next seven years. Last year, manufacturing jobs in Oregon increased 0.7% while they declined nationally 1.0%

“Oregon’s strategic location and infrastructure upgrades are helping businesses get products to market more quickly,” said the Governor. “But to stay competitive, we must invest in critical workforce training for our state.”