Sandvik Coromant Continues Dialogue on Industrial Trends

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This June marked the world premiere of the second Sandvik Coromant trend film “A Look Ahead at Hyperspecialization and the Talent Mismatch.”

In 2013, Sandvik Coromant launched a dialogue with the manufacturing industry focusing on macro trends affecting the future of manufacturing. This was supported by a trend report and a video highlighting the effects of urbanization, sustainability, new materials, and new technology.

This time, the industry leader took a look at competence-related trends, such as the upcoming skills gap and talent mismatch. These trends indicated that the world may lack up to 85 million skilled workers by the year 2020. Other topics include hyperspecialization and the way people will be educated in the future.

“When it comes to the trends of the manufacturing industry, market leaders have a responsibility to be perceptive and forward thinking. We are a knowledge company.
Competence and R&D are part of our main cornerstones. That is why it is imperative to us that there is a dialogue in the industry on how to meet future demands on competence and skills,” said Klas Forsström, president, Sandvik Coromant.

With the baby boom generation going into retirement and taking their knowledge with them, the manufacturing industry is faced with a number of new challenges. This also means that knowledge and skills will become a much more scarce resource in the future. Despite facing the largest new generation group ever, there is a problem. Their profile is not very well matched with the competence needs of the industry. This will force companies to change the way they construct their work. It will also change the way we think about education.

In the future, manufacturers will not be able to have all competencies in-house. This opens up new ways of working and cooperating. Previously, outsourcing was done as a matter of cost. In the future, outsourcing will be a means to access required skills. Work, as such, will be constructed differently by distributing it to specialists around the world and then bringing it back together again for delivery.

“It is very much an orchestrated network where specific project managers will coordinate a set of experts just like a conductor leads the way in a philharmonic orchestra. This way of working opens up for new partnerships and cooperation between manufacturers, tool makers, machine makers, universities, and research centers,” Forsström explains.

In order to meet the needs of skilled specialists, universities and education institutions need to change their way of working. In the future there is a much greater need for learning on demand in terms of providing the right training, to the right people, at the right place and at the right time. We are moving from linear learning to modular learning.

The current trends present threats as well as opportunities. Companies who figure out how to take advantage of new ways of working enabled by new technologies will have a significant advantage in the future.

“We will continue the dialogue about the future of the manufacturing industry and share important knowledge on new trends and challenges,” Forström concludes.

Visit Sandvik’s website (www.sandvik.coromant.com) to view the video in its entirety.