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Reshoring
An operator running an industrial 3D printer needs training, but not the same decade of trade experience a journeyman machinist takes to develop. Redirecting some of that work to technologies that require less scarce labor is a legitimate short-term play for manufacturers under reshoring pressure.
At BigRep, we’ re seeing US manufacturers deploy large-format additive systems specifically for this reason: they get in-house production capacity up and running without waiting on a hire that may take 12 to 18 months to land.
The second lever is training tied to specific reshored capacity, not treated as a generic pipeline. Apprenticeship programs, technical college partnerships, and internal cross-training all take time to mature, but those that deliver results fastest align to specific production lines the company knows it’ s bringing home. Training six operators for the equipment you’ re installing in nine months is a solvable problem. Building a generic manufacturing workforce in the abstract is not.
The workforce is the real timeline
The gap the survey exposes isn’ t going to close on its own. The manufacturers who close it will be the ones who treat the workforce constraint as a design problem, not just a hiring problem.
Be honest about which reshored work needs scarce skilled labor, and which doesn’ t. Match production technologies to the workforce that exists regionally, not the workforce you’ d have in an ideal market. Tie training investment to the reshored capacity being built on the same timeline as the equipment.
The strategic decision to bring production home has been made. Whether it succeeds or stalls depends on how quickly manufacturers solve the workforce problem sitting underneath it. ■
Lindsay
Lawson www. bigrep. com
Lindsay Lawson is Head of Product Marketing at BigRep. BigRep designs and manufactures large-format industrial 3D printing systems used by Fortune 100 companies and engineering teams to bring reshored production, tooling, and end-use part manufacturing in-house. With a growing US customer base across automotive, aerospace, defense, and industrial manufacturing, BigRep works with operations leaders to close the gap between reshoring intent and reshoring execution through flexible, workforce-scalable additive manufacturing.
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