The reason I wrote my new book, “Visual Thinking,” is that I am concerned that many industries are losing valuable skills. My wake-up call came from plants I visited in 2019 right before COVID-19 shut everything down. I went to four places. They were two brand new, state-of-the-art pork plants, a new poultry processing plant and the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple. Most of the equipment in the three new meat plants was imported from Holland. The structural glass walls at the Steve Jobs Theater were designed in Italy and fabricated in Germany. This got me thinking about the possible reason for the lost skills in the United States. We are losing the skills because the people I worked with in the 1990s to develop the center track restrainer and those who built my stockyard systems have retired and many of them are not getting replaced. Decisions that were made 20 to 25 years ago caused this problem. Most schools don’t offer shop classes and many companies either closed down or reduced “in-house” engineering departments. The huge Montfort Fab Shop that built a lot of my equipment was closed years ago.

Tomorrow’s engineers

While working on the book, I went back and made a list of all the major projects or large construction projects that I spent significant amounts of time working on. I estimate that about 20% of the skilled metal fabricators and drafting design people who laid out entire factories were individuals with undiagnosed autism, dyslexia or ADHD. They got into their careers because they had a single welding class, or they had worked on cars. When I give talks to autism groups, I tell them about my experiences with autistic people who had both great careers and 20 patents. There is a connection between the autistic adult playing video games in the basement and your plant. When they get exposed to mechanics or fixing cars, they learn that it is more interesting than video games. These are the people you need in your plant repairing and building equipment.

Right now, I am working with a large client that has no “in-house” capability to build simple hydraulic equipment. The few good maintenance people will soon be aging out. The next time you see people fixing an elevator or an escalator, do a “gray hair” check. Recently I saw four men repairing an escalator at an airport and three out of four had gray hair.

The solution to replacing these people when they retire is putting shop classes back into the schools. Some states are already beginning to do this. Today, too many students are growing up and have never used tools. They never had a chance to try them. Kids need to get hooked on tools when they are in elementary school or middle school. Then they can learn if they love building things. I loved building things when I was a child and I spent hours tinkering with little kites and figuring out how to make them fly. Training the next generation of people who can build mechanical things must start in the schools.