Take time to improve yourself and your manufacturing business
FMA Virtual Annual Meeting provides opportunities to learn from other fabricators, industry experts
The 2021 FMA Virtual Annual Meeting on March 3-4 celebrates hundreds of leaders and manufacturing heroes in metals fabrication, processing, and distribution.
The past year has been a stressful one for all in the metal fabricating community. In spring 2020 shops were wondering where they fit into the overall economic discussion as the world tried to figure out what an essential and nonessential business was. Those who continued to work had to figure out how to do it safely.
Then as business began picking up from almost halting in the earlier part of the year, metal fabricating companies had to balance the normal chaos of job scheduling and tight lead times with the reality of people needing more flexible schedules and extended absences for those that may have gotten the COVID-19 or been exposed to someone who had. With a
Minnesota fabricating community bands together to support welding program
Financial donations for South Central College welding lab aim to develop local manufacturing talent
Photos courtesy of South Central College
When Sarah Richards went to work for the family metal fabricating company, Jones Metal Inc., Mankato, Minn., in the latter part of the first decade of the 2000s, one of the first things she tackled was recruitment and employee retention. Early on she saw the difficulty in trying to entice young people into considering a career in manufacturing.
Today Richards and other nearby manufacturers who joined the cause see the fruition of their commitment to promoting manufacturing. With the help of state funding and additional financial support from the Jones family’s charitable foundation and those local metal fabricating companies, the North Mankato campus of South Central College now has a state-of-the-art welding lab and a waiting list of students to get into it.