Open to Work: Additive Minds Business Development Director Fabian Alefeld on 3D Printing’s Role in Building America’s Manufacturing Workforce

The attempt by US policymakers and major corporate stakeholders to ignite a domestic manufacturing renaissance over the last few years has so far seen mixed results. Fabian Alefeld, the global director of  business development for Additive Minds at EOS, frames it as a quintessential chicken or the egg scenario:

“If we want to bring back manufacturing,” Alefeld began, “who’s supposed to make the parts? And that goes the same for whether you’re talking about conventional processes or methods like additive manufacturing (AM). At the same time, also, US manufacturers need investments to flow into areas beyond workforce development — they need new, more advanced equipment that allows them to diversify their production capabilities.”

We’d started off talking about New York state’s recently announced One Network for Regional Advanced Manufacturing Partnerships (ON-RAMP) initiative. Backed by $200 million in public funds, ON-RAMP aims to create four new advanced manufacturing workforce development hubs across the state:

“While we haven’t been involved in shaping or defining the ON-RAMP initiative, we do have machines at academic institutions in the state of New York,” Alefeld said. “Beyond the funding, I think the positive news there is that we’ve started to see a larger trend across the US as a whole —whether at the state or federal level — where there’s a growing realization that, if we want to reshore, we need major action in order to address the workforce shortage in the manufacturing sector. So I think ON-RAMP is a great start, and it’s the type of thing we’d love to be a part of, if given the opportunity. But we’ve also been taking additional steps, ourselves, to prioritize workforce development, so that we can ensure that both the existing workforce and new workers are capable of improving their AM capabilities.”

One of those steps that Alefeld was referring to is EOS’ opening of the Additive Minds physical campus at the company’s North American headquarters in Novi, Michigan. When I went to the open house celebrating the campus’s launch, the main thing I was struck by was how many workers could be trained in a relatively small location, in a building that, from the outside, was much more reminiscent of a dentist’s office more than it was of a factory.

While large industrial complexes will still play a dominant role in training US manufacturing workers for the foreseeable future, the more approachable, more easily deployable model that EOS has created shows great potential for attracting new workers into the manufacturing sector. Accomplishing that task is quickly becoming something of an emergency: a Deloitte study published earlier this year estimates that the US will need to hire almost 4 million new manufacturing workers by 2033, and around half of those roles face a serious threat of going unfilled.

Solving such a daunting, complex problem will require a combination of many long-term solutions. Underlying all of those possible solutions, however, is the simple need to make manufacturing jobs more attractive to prospective hires:

“One silver lining to the workforce shortage is that, if there’s high demand and low supply, employers will in many cases have no choice but to increase salaries, which would obviously make manufacturing jobs more desirable to more people,” Alefeld explained. “But it’s also on businesses to make manufacturing operations more attractive environments to work in, and I think AM can play a significant role there. When people are presented with a new technology, it’s exciting, especially when they’re still in that decision phase of their lives in terms of weighing the pros and cons of  multiple different career paths.

And, with the Additive Minds Academy, for instance, we can train people how to operate an EOS system — a highly complex industrial machine — with two weeks of online training and one week of in-person training, which really isn’t that long. Of course, you’re still going to need continued on-the-job training, and we also shouldn’t underestimate how many workers we’re still going to need who have highly technical, advanced degrees. But overall, in the long run, I do think we’re going to lower the required skill level for entry-level workers in the AM industry.”

From his unique vantage point as someone who grew up in Germany, lives in America, and has trained workers around the world, Alefeld also sees an increase in the use of the apprenticeship model as a way that both businesses and the public sector in the US can accelerate interest in manufacturing jobs:

“In Germany, apprenticeships are very, very common — almost the standard way to get into a trade,” Alefeld told me. “If you want to be a carpenter in Germany, you typically start learning at a company as an apprentice. EOS itself has an apprenticeship program in Germany for mechatronics. I think this is a very successful way to attract new workers, because they start getting paid from day one, and you don’t rack up the debts associated with getting a secondary education.

From the company’s perspective, you get to build up new hires by educating them in your own specific workflows, while also incorporating them into your culture. Building an employee up from the ground level and letting them see all the different parts of your organization, is an extremely valuable way to develop talent.

In parallel, companies also need to simply focus on retraining existing workers by incentivizing them to learn new skills — if you’re a machinist, you’re a great candidate to sidestep into AM. In that sense, until demand for new AM workers starts to hit critical mass, it’s important that we as a company keep helping our customers bridge the gap so that they don’t have to devote the resources and energy required to develop their own internal training programs.”

Finally, even as Additive Minds focuses on its physical campus, the company sees online training as being just as important a tool as ever for bringing new employees into the AM fold:

“We don’t talk much about this publicly yet, but we’ve launched what we call our Ignite Program, where we give colleges and universities the opportunity to use our training content as part of their curriculum. We’ve done two undergrad classes so far with the University of Illinois, for example. I think that’s a great way to expose students to AM, both technologically, as well as helping them understand the industry itself, and its viability for future career opportunities.”

As complicated a job as it may be to build America’s future manufacturing labor pool, the business rationale driving EOS on that mission is in fact fairly straightforward:

“We have Additive Minds for two reasons. One is to lower the barrier and risk for our customers investing into AM. Our team comes in and supports our customers in the application development phase, so we can help them bring the first application into production, which allows them to leverage our engineering capabilities. That’s the consulting aspect. Second, through the academy, we don’t do the job for them — we educate them as we go.”