My Opinion on "lack of human resources" in Manufacturing Industry

        In recent years, due to the decline of the birthrate and social factors, the age gap in manufacturing industry is very large. In the current workplace, seniority of 93% of colleagues is over 20 years and 88% of colleagues over 25 years. This phenomenon doesn’t only exist in spinning and chemical fibre industry, but also in almost all kinds of manufacturing industries in Taiwan, which has become a major challenge in recruitment and technology inheritance.

        Far Eastern Group has noticed this problem. In addition to encouraging its academic units to cooperate with production units (such as Far Eastern New Century’s Corporation with Yuan Ze University in large-scale projects and papers), students from Oriental Institute of Technology are also arranged to go to factories for a year-long internship. It is expected to attract young people to enter the manufacturing industry, and through daily work and chatting, I also have a better understanding of the young people's attitude towards employment.

         On the other hand, my alma mater is a traditional technical school. In recent years, it has held the courses of "Master-apprenticeship Interdisciplinary Industrialization", inviting alumni from all fields to come back to share their industrial experience, and I have also been invited to participate in it. In order to understand the willingness of young people to enter manufacturing industry, I conducted a questionnaire survey especially after the lecture. According to the statistical data, we found that: 1. Nearly 80% of the students are willing to visit all kinds of factories as a reference for their future employment.

         2. Students who have accumulated more work experience in school have a higher willingness to enter the workplace and try different work styles.

         3. People who do not reject shift work usually pay more attention to the type of industry and scale of the company. In other words, they pay more attention to whether the company is stable enough.

         4. The willingness to "work in other counties and cities" and "overseas posts" is related to whether the company provides a "stable promotion system".

         5. The eldest children and the children in the middle in the families have a greater acceptance of the mixed-age workplace.

         6. Students who are willing to take the time to solve various problems and are interested in working in different fields usually have more preferences for manufacturing and technology industries. In the past, the perception of generation gap is that a decade creates a gap, but after communicating with young colleagues and newcomers in the workplace, I found that the "gap" is gradually narrowing, even to five or three years. It will also become an important issue to recruit people from different generations. I would like to provide this article to relevant units as a reference to understand the young people and how to attract a new generation to enter the manufacturing industry. If students can fully understand the advantages of manufacturing industry during their study in the schools, I believe it will become an opportunity for enterprises to recruit.