An ongoing labor shortage continues to hold back growth at local manufacturers, according to industry leaders. But the Digital Foundry at New Kensington seeks to help companies to adopt new technologies to manage the challenge.
The business services and workforce development center unveiled its newly constructed facility in the heart of downtown New Kensington Wednesday. The 15,000-square-foot space includes a technology showroom where small-scale models of machinery demonstrate how manufacturers can use digital sensors, cameras, data analytics, and robots to streamline their operations.
Digital Foundry Executive Director Sherri McCleary said such tools can help to make up for a lack of workers, while also creating jobs.
“We've known for years, with the baby boomers’ exodus from the workforce, that we were going to have a workforce shortage. … It just was accelerated [by pandemic-related retirements],” she said. “As we go out and talk to manufacturers, a lot of them are saying, 'The only thing standing between us and growing our company [and] adding more jobs is the fact that we can't fill jobs that we need now.'”
“So,” she said, “we need to replace some of that [labor] with more technology, more automation, more robotics, more rapid decision-making.”
Workers themselves can learn how to use those technologies by enrolling in training at the Digital Foundry. The center offers courses for beginners as well as for more established employees who want to develop their skills further.
“It's an opportunity for people who want to get a good family-sustaining job but currently lack the skills to do so,” Neil Weaver, the acting secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Community and Economic Development, said at Wednesday’s open house.
“Digital Foundry gives them not just a starting point, but a pathway that will lead them into these in-demand long-term jobs,” he said. And he noted that his department has awarded $186,000 in grant funding to support the initiative.
The idea began in 2017 as a partnership between Penn State University’s New Kensington campus, the Westmoreland County Industrial Development Corporation, Economic Growth Connection of Westmoreland, and the Richard King Mellon Foundation.
Penn State contributed $1 million to create an endowment that will finance the Digital Foundry’s continued operations. University President Neeli Bendapudi said in remarks Wednesday that Penn State committed the matching gift after receiving $1.5 million in federal funds to support the manufacturing services hub. The R.K. Mellon Foundation has donated $5.5 million to the cause.
McCleary expects the Digital Foundry's work to impact small manufacturers most. She said market research shows that nearly all of the roughly 5,000 manufacturing companies within 40 miles of the organization are small businesses.
And she said they have largely been left behind as the economy shifts to digitization. “They need to be moving in this direction, too, but they don't necessarily have the resources or know where to begin.”
But she said the Digital Foundry will help them to find affordable options.
“We don't want to go in and tell people they have to replace their legacy equipment,” she said. “That's an enormous investment. That can be difficult, whether it's a large business or a small business.”
“So,” she said her staff will ask, “how can you overlay technology on what you already have to add an inexpensive sensor, add an inexpensive vision system, add some computing capability to take that data you're getting and convert it into dashboards that someone can [use to] make decisions on the plant floor?”
She noted that sensors gather comprehensive data on the performance of machinery, curtailing the need to assign employees to monitor the equipment themselves. Digital platforms can then instantly process the resulting metrics to inform business decisions.
“You’re taking all this data and information you're gathering, and you're creating visuals that somebody in the plant or even somebody sitting on the other side of the world is using to manage a global asset," she said.
“They can look at what's going on. Where might there be problems? Where do we need to take action and … make smarter business decisions that lead to considerable cost savings, energy savings, quality improvements, improved employee safety?”
And she added, “As technology becomes cheaper and cheaper, it's going to become even more pervasive. So we're hoping to better prepare our region to deal with this change that's happening at a pace that's really unprecedented in human history.”
