The New Collar Workforce: An Insider's Guide to Making Impactful Changes to Manufacturing and Training

U.S. manufacturing companies are expected to face a shortage of 2 million skilled workers by the year 2020. As a result, manufacturers, educators and economic development professionals everywhere are looking for real, actionable ideas to train workers, reduce the shortfall and realize the potential of the new age of manufacturing.
Author Sarah Boisvert is an innovative leader in high-tech product commercialization and digital fabrication whose undeniable passion for the subject - it is one she has lived and breathed for many years - and the results of her survey of the worker needs U.S. manufacturers are facing, are at the core of this very timely and easy-to-read book
The "new collar" workers that manufacturers seek have the digital skills needed to "run automation and software, design in CAD, program sensors, maintain robots, repair 3D printers, and collect and analyze data," according to the author. Educational systems must evolve to supply Industry 4.0 with new collar workers, and this book leads the reader to innovative programs that are recreating training programs for a new age in manufacturing.
The author's call to action is clear: "We live in a time of extraordinary opportunity to look to the future and fundamentally change manufacturing jobs but also to show people the value in new collar jobs and to create nontraditional pathways to engaging, fulfilling careers in the digital factory. If industry is to invigorate and revitalize manufacturing, it must start with the new collar workers who essentially make digital fabrication for Industry 4.0 possible."
This book is for anyone who hires, trains or manages a manufacturing workforce; educates or parents students who are searching for a career path; or is exploring a career change.

Sarah Boisvert has more than 30 years of experience in the design, development and commercialization of high-technology products utilizing digital fabrication methods including laser machining and 3D printing. Her graduate work in market segmentation at Johns Hopkins University led to her expertise in productization of high tech devices. Ms. Boisvert is a co-founder of the commercial division of Potomac Photonics Inc. of Baltimore, which she joined to commercialize a proprietary RF-discharge excimer laser. Following the sale of the company in 1999, Ms. Boisvert founded Fab Lab Hub, part of the MIT-based Fab Lab Network, in order to foster entrepreneurship and workforce training in digital fabrication manufacturing skills. She returned to Potomac part time as chief 3D printing officer in February 2014. Ms. Boisvert is a fellow and past president of the Laser Institute of America and has served on The Optical Society's Industry Advisory Board as well as on the boards of numerous international technical societies. For fun, she creates 3D-printed jewelry.