In the Media

Ben Armstrong, interim executive director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center, speaks with Forbes contributor Ethan Karp about the labor shortage in manufacturing and the future of the field. “We want to have companies that are really driving technology forward and forcing us to adjust our training system to be more technologically advanced,” says Armstrong. “Instead, the problem is that a lot of small and medium manufacturers are offering comparatively low-wage, low-tech jobs that are oftentimes low-skilled. So companies are adapting a lot of their operations to a lower-technology, lower-wage, lower-skill equilibrium.”