Center for Business, Industry & Labor

              cbil.org

On Target • On Demand • On Site

IBM client training will be hosted at our DEC Computer Training Lab.  Nationwide Training Alliance has selected CBIL DEC lab as their St. Louis based training site.

In 2000, U.S. businesses spent an estimated $51 billion to improve the skills of their personnel.

Center to Boost High Tech Manufacturing Industry in St. Louis

Businesses in the St. Louis area are faced with the ever growing demand to produce products cheaper and faster. Some new technology will help businesses meet this demand as long as there are skilled workers to operate the new machines. Many companies, including those in St. Louis, have begun to seek out a skilled workforce outside the state, the region, and sometimes even outside the country just to keep pace with their competitors. Companies moving to the new technology either train the existing staff, import new workers at a higher cost or they lag behind the competition. St. Louis now has a resource to aid in the development of a skilled workforce.

St. Louis Community College has developed the Advanced Manufacturing Center at Florissant Valley, which is set for groundbreaking in spring 2003 and completion in August 2004. This is a direct and tangible response to the obstacles facing St. Louis manufacturers and workers. The Missouri General Assembly recognized that companies may leave the state if they can not find the resources in Missouri. Therefore the assembly approved a statewide educational plan that calls for the establishment of centers of technological excellence to focus on the development and delivery of advanced technological education and training. The Center’s programs and activities will focus on the workforce needs of the St. Louis area’s manufacturing sectors, including electronics and aircraft and aerospace manufacturing, plastics processing industries, machine tool and scientific and medical instrument manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and chemical processing plants.

Ashok Agrawal, chair of SLCC-Florissant Valley’s Engineering and Technology department, leads the effort to make the Advanced Manufacturing Center a reality. Agrawal says St. Louis Community College is the natural choice to spearhead such an undertaking, citing its 40-year history of providing nationally recognized engineering and technical programs. No other public, two-year college in the region offers the level of manufacturing curricula and programs already in place at SLCC. The Center will further establish the College as the preeminent leader and provider of engineering technology and manufacturing education in the metro St. Louis area.

“This Center will fill a great need in our community,” Agrawal said. “There is a tremendous demand for these people, these highly skilled workers. Companies are beginning to move out due to the lack of a qualified workforce. We need to make sure that trend doesn’t continue. We can’t afford to lose the manufacturing base in St. Louis, or in this country, for that matter.”

In addition to enhancing and adding to the College’s manufacturing programs and training capacities, the Center will hold regular forums through its public-private partnerships to bring professionals and government and industry leaders together to dialogue on technical and workforce issues that impact manufacturing in the region. It will partner with the region’s colleges and universities to hold workshops, seminars and institutes on new and emerging technologies and their applications in the local manufacturing environment. A National Visiting Committee of experts from industry educational institutions and government agencies will be established and meet periodically at the Center to share national trends, technological advances and economic opportunities.

The Center also will serve current industry personnel, providing them with technical workshops and short-term training programs on CAD, solid modeling, product design and manufacturing, quality systems, plant safety, process control and other technologies related to manufacturing systems and management.

Responding to the educational needs of the community—and providing the community at large with direct and indirect economic advantages—is what a community college is all about. A recent socioeconomic study highlights not only the deep educational roots the College has in St. Louis, but also the impact the College has had on local economic growth. The Advanced Manufacturing Center will further deepen those roots and contribute to the economic development of our city.

“There is nothing else like it,” Agrawal says. “We looked at what we already have and at what we were missing, and we’re putting it all together to offer the best high-tech training available.”