It’s about to get really expensive to source anything from abroad, and if you haven’t made a plan to reduce the impact on your operations yet, the next few years are going to hit your bottom line. It’s time to get to work safeguarding your company’s future. In this article, we’ll walk through some tactics that will help you weather this.

Reshoring is already happening; how are you keeping up?

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), reshoring will primarily benefit smaller, more nimble manufacturers as they are able to leverage localized supply chains for greater flexibility and faster turn times. And according to Kearney’s 2025 report, 15% more CEOs plan to reshore at least part of their operations by 2028.

But in light of current worker shortages, and with the understanding of how many are retiring in the coming decade, it’s critically important to be able to attract enough maintenance team members and ensure they have the necessary skills to keep your facilities in tip-top shape. Using the tactics in this article will help reduce the challenges around hiring and retaining these key workers, especially when onshoring or reshoring your workforce is necessary. If you’re already making plans like these, you’re ahead of the curve. If not, consider applying these strategies to your plans.

3 tactics for improving onshoring and reshoring efforts

It’s time to embrace new technologies designed to make your team more efficient!

Automation & smart manufacturing

Adding smart technology is a big way that manufacturers will be able to keep up with hiring enough technicians to maintain peak machine uptime and reduce unplanned downtime.

With the right guardrails in place, adding robotics, AI, and devices that rely on IoT (Internet of Things) streamlines your operations and reduces the need to hire massive numbers of entry level and unskilled roles. This allows manufacturers to: 

  • ·       Use predictive maintenance and similar tactics to reduce downtime and increase efficiency.
  • ·       Reduce the total workforce needed, minimizing recruitment challenges.
  • ·       In turn, allow a greater percentage of the available workforce to grow into technician and maintenance roles for better earning potential with a lower overall headcount needed for basic operations.

Building with scalability in mind

When building or remodeling, the scalability of your facilities matters. Build near major population centers to maximize the available workforce. Consider multiple smaller facilities, too, to preserve that workforce for:

  • ·       Faster development
  • ·       Easier recruitment
  • ·       Larger candidate pools

The alternative? A single facility that employs most of a small town carries great risk: if the manufacturer fails, it can devastate a community; on the other hand, if the community doesn’t grow at the scale the business needs, it can hinder profitability.

Upskilling the workforce

When automation and smart manufacturing tactics are in place, and regardless of the size or location of your facility, upskilling is the logical next step for strengthening your workforce.

According to a report by The Reshoring Initiative, an independent nonprofit founded in 2010: survey respondents indicated that if they were able to attract a highly skilled workforce, they would reshore 30% of offshored products. But that skilled, technical workforce is the keystone you can’t ignore.

Building your skilled industrial maintenance workforce starts with:

  1. Building apprenticeship programs in partnership with local schools and training providers
  2.  Partnering with vocational technology schools and community colleges to build a more sustained workforce pipeline by offering internships
  3.  Offering on-the-job training that is flexible and scalable – such as with online training and simulation-based training for optimal learning retention – so you can train those with technical aptitude when you can’t find enough experienced techs
  4.  Looking for subscription-based training models that are easy to expand as you hire
  5.  Finding progressive training that advances their troubleshooting skills before your maintenance team works on your expensive, potentially brand-new equipment

You’re probably well on your way to planning your reshoring efforts – but regardless where those plans sit, your current technical workforce’s success and the solvency of more expensive stateside manufacturing is going to come down to the skill of your machinists, millwrights, and electricians. If you can’t hire enough or can’t hire skilled enough, training is how you get to profitability fastest.

 

TPC provides flexible and scalable online subscription-based training for millwrights, electricians, machinists, and others who handle industrial maintenance and technical operations. Their training solutions incorporate learning and technical best practices and their simulation-based learning platform provides an immersive, gaming-like environment for learning. It’s where your team members can embrace a systematic troubleshooting approach that helps companies like yours plan downtime and save money (and spare parts). Ready to leverage training to streamline technical operations? Let's talk training.

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