The moldmaking industry is experiencing numerous challenges, from the evolving global economic and social landscape to rising environmental concerns and the need for sustainable solutions. To tackle these obstacles, moldmakers must first confront the scarcity of skilled labor.
Workforce Challenges
The mold manufacturing industry has unique workforce challenges because of its highly specialized nature and reliance on traditional apprenticeship systems. Recruitment and retention pose significant hurdles because finding employees with the necessary technical expertise can be arduous and costly.
Furthermore, retention is hampered by a lacking awareness among workers regarding long-term career prospects in the industry. Additionally, the speed of technological advancements and the ever-changing customer demands only broaden the skills gap and require investment in training and education initiatives tailored to the evolving needs of the industry.
The moldmaking industry can navigate its workforce challenges and thrive by implementing comprehensive strategies that prioritize education, diversity and inclusivity.
Apprenticeship-based training remains integral, which highlights the industry’s resistance to complete modernization. Promoting diversity and inclusivity is a must to foster innovation and attract top talent while addressing generational change, which requires strategic initiatives to appeal to younger professionals. The moldmaking industry can navigate its workforce challenges and thrive by implementing comprehensive strategies that prioritize education, diversity and inclusivity.
Educational Challenges
Traditionally, moldmakers acquire their skills through on-the-job training, acquiring expertise over time. However, this approach has resulted in an aging and homogeneous workforce without formal education opportunities. This lack of structured training programs means employees face challenges in meeting business demands for efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Also, a shortage of university-level courses focusing on mold design and manufacturing leaves engineers ill-prepared for the industry’s specific needs.
Students need practical skills to be successful when they enter the moldmaking workforce. They also need to be exposed to industry resources like MoldMaking Technology.
Technical high schools, potential talent pools for the industry, struggle to keep pace with technological advancements due to limited resources. So, graduates often lack practical skills, leading to a disconnect between industry requirements and their capabilities. The shortage of experienced professionals willing to teach makes matters worse, compromising the quality of education.
Finally, insufficient collaboration between educational institutions and industry leads to a skills mismatch, as curricula fail to align with industry needs. This mismatch hampers the efficiency of engineering graduates, as theoretical knowledge often does not translate into practical skills required in the workplace. Experiential learning and ongoing training are necessities.
Political-Economic-Social-Technological-Legal-Environmental (PESTLE) Analysis
This research used the PESTLE framework approach to formally analyze the moldmaking industry and its workforce challenges. Following is a summary of the research’s main takeaways:
P – Political Perspective
Global trade policies and geopolitics influence competition and domestic wages.
Government regulations, especially related to labor and environment, impact reshoring and innovation.
E – Economic Aspects
Rising cost pressures affect profitability and skilled worker retention.
Customer demands for intricate molds may not always translate to higher profitability.
Skills gap challenges in sourcing personnel capable of manufacturing complex molds.
S – Social Perspective
Negative perception of manufacturing discourages young workers, accelerating workforce aging.
Lack of accessible training programs hampers workforce skills acquisition.
Negative and ill-informed perceptions of plastic and its environmental impact affect the industry.
T – Technological Aspects
Automation and smart manufacturing support industry growth but require continuous upskilling.
Simulation tools can be costly and not always accessible to small and medium companies.
Not all moldmaking processes can be automated, requiring significant contributions from skilled workers.
L – Legal Landscape
Stringent safety regulations and labor laws impact competitiveness and training costs.
Immigration restrictions may exacerbate labor shortages.
E – Environmental Concerns
Sustainability demands impact materials, processes and competitiveness.
Lack of clarity around sustainable strategies and actions to support manufacturers’ net-zero carbon goals.
Recognizing the importance of experiential learning and ongoing training, the industry must invest in professional development initiatives to empower the workforce to adapt to evolving technologies and drive innovation in moldmaking.
Overcoming these challenges requires a strategy centered on increased profitability, which includes a focus on cost reduction, especially since raising mold prices is not viable. Cost reduction and improved quality can be simultaneously realized by leveraging technological advancements. For example, establishing a smart mold factory through data-driven engineering, digital twin implementation and automation in design, machining and measurement. It is essential to state that directly pursuing cost reductions does not improve productivity and competitiveness.
Future Outlook
Overall, the research shows that the moldmaking industry faces significant workforce and technological challenges on a global scale. To remain competitive, mold builders must prioritize investments in talent attraction, skills development and technology adoption, including automation and digital twin models to enhance efficiency and competitiveness.
However, for technological advancements to bear fruit, educational programs at various levels must support practical training, simulation, data analysis and robotics. Collaborative efforts between educational institutions and industry players are essential to effectively tailor curricula and training initiatives to meet changing needs. And while governmental and non-governmental support remains essential, governments must also prioritize technology advancement and workforce development initiatives.
Mold manufacturing demands a high level of specialized skill and expertise, making it challenging to replicate through automation. We will address automation concerns later. The programming and operation of automation equipment necessitates skilled labor, and finding such skilled workers can be problematic in certain areas. Overall, mold manufacturing is a highly specialized and complex process that requires a combination of advanced technology and skilled labor. General mold technology is described in a comprehensive way in several excellent works of literature.
However, in practice, the task of manufacturing a mold is unlikely to be performed only with such written and illustrated knowledge and requires the acquisition of empirical knowledge that is usually handed down. This complicates the restoration of industrial ecosystems after their collapse. Therefore, the core of the public efforts to train manpower in the mold industry was to try to maintain this apprenticeship system continuously. The mold industry requires a workforce with strong communication skills, up-to-date engineering skills, and patience for the intensive training process, but the workforce problems start when the industry in general is not profitable enough to provide appropriate compensation. Let us discuss this challenge further and suggest possible solutions.
The engineering workforce in the mold-making industry consists of college-educated professionals with backgrounds in plastics engineering, mechanical engineering, mold design, or related fields. These individuals blend traditional craftsmanship with modern technological expertise, utilizing advanced tools such as simulation and optimization software for efficient design processes. Knowledge-based engineering and design automation play crucial roles in accelerating and standardizing mold development. Collaborative interdisciplinary teamwork and continuous learning are integral aspects of their roles, ensuring adaptability in the dynamic landscape of the plastics industry.
The mold engineers must undergo training for systems that require extensive education, such as CAD, simulation, measurement-related tools, and long-term learning for equipment like machining centers and injection molding machines. The complexity of the tools used in real-world applications makes it challenging to achieve sufficient proficiency through education at universities or colleges alone. Additionally, when these tools and systems are associated with automation, programming or scripting may be necessary, further raising the demands of the required training.
Despite their proficiency, these engineers face challenges in keeping pace with rapid technological advancements, necessitating ongoing skill development. Economic pressures and environmental concerns present additional hurdles for sustainability in the plastics tooling sector. Future trends involve a shift toward eco-friendly materials and processes, emphasizing circular economy principles and energy-efficient technologies. Engineers must navigate these challenges adeptly, balancing innovation, economic considerations, and environmental consciousness.
Impact of Manual Labor
Labor-related factors primarily affect social aspects, particularly health, rather than the environment. In addressing today’s environmental issues, the term “environment” refers to an environment suitable for human and earthly organisms to thrive. Therefore, the impact of labor on human health and social perspectives is an immediate and significant concern.
Although automation has been considerably implemented, human labor still constitutes a significant portion of tooling. Manual processes play a crucial role in tasks that are challenging to automate or demand meticulous control over the final product. These include manual finishing, manual tooling, assembly, fitting, inspection, quality control, and functional validation.
Manual finishing is often necessary after initial machining operations to achieve the desired surface finish, remove imperfections, or enhance mold details. Manual finish techniques include deburring, polishing, texturing, and marking. Polishing involves gradually refining the surface using abrasive materials, while surface texturing creates intended textures through engraving, etching, or manual carving. Skilled technicians execute these techniques to achieve accurate replication. However, manual finishing is labor-intensive and time-consuming compared with automated alternatives, and it involves working with harmful materials near human workers. For this reason, polishing accounts for approximately 10% of the total mold cost. According to professional guideline, polishing is performed using different processes according to the standard. Considering the characteristics of the various shapes of the mold, various methods, such as mechanical, chemical, electrolytic, ultrasonic, hydrodynamic, and magnetic, must be used. Each of these methods requires experienced people, creating difficulties in securing technicians for each type of technology. Consequently, reducing reliance on manual finishing and exploring automation options can streamline the mold-making process, increase efficiency, and improve overall outcomes.
Manual assembly ensures proper alignment and functionality by fitting mold components together, inserting inserts or cores, and securing them with screws, bolts, or clamps. Manual inspection processes play a critical role in maintaining mold accuracy and quality. Mold makers carefully examine the mold for defects, imperfections, or dimensional deviations using measuring tools such as calipers, gauges, or coordinate measuring machines (CMMs). It is worth noting that automating the CMM has been a significant objective for an extended period of time. Nonetheless, achieving automation has proven to be challenging. Additionally, manual processes are involved in conducting test moldings to verify functionality and performance, including injecting the mold with the desired material and evaluating the resulting parts for any issues.
Achieving complete automation in mold fabrication currently appears to be nearly impossible. However, minimizing the impact of labor seems effective by automating processes as much as possible [53], particularly by reducing manual finishing and metrology. Metrology is essential due to the high-dimensional precision requirements in mold making. It involves a combination of human labor and automated processes. In particular, visually inspecting molds for surface defects or performing manual measurements with handheld tools may continue to require human involvement. Skilled technicians conduct manual inspection and measurement tasks, carefully assessing dimensional characteristics and surface quality. Automation, including coordinate measuring machines (CMMs), optical measurement systems, and laser scanners, has significantly improved the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of measuring molds’ dimensional features. Specialized software analyzes and processes measurement data obtained from automated systems, providing detailed reports and statistical analysis. Overall, metrology in mold making involves a balance between human labor and automation. The specific balance depends on the measurement complexity and available technology.
In addition, the mold validation process also requires skilled human labor. In the case of injection molding or press forming, simulation is applied during the design phase, which is then validated through actual tryouts. Modifying the mold and die based on these results also demands experienced personnel. These individuals must have a comprehensive understanding of mold and the molding process, which requires high education and experience. In some cases, dissatisfaction with the molding results can be addressed by adjusting the molding conditions, so the decision on how extensively the mold should be modified relies on human judgment.