In this episode, unPACKed with PMMI continues the conversation with one of PMMI's Annual Meeting speakers, Terry Iverson, founder of CHAMPION Now. He discusses his mission to change outdated perceptions of American manufacturing, highlighting the shift toward automation and technology-driven careers. Iverson emphasizes that while automation may take over repetitive tasks, it creates higher-paying, skilled jobs, particularly for those with tech skills like coding and critical thinking. Iverson also notes the importance of reshoring jobs to the U.S. and advocates for a stronger focus on technical education to build a competitive workforce.
Sean Riley: So with all the fancy introductions out of the way, welcome to the podcast, Terry Iverson. Welcome Terry.
Terry Iverson: Thank you, Sean. Thanks for having me.
Sean Riley: The pleasure is all ours. So you gave a great presentation at PMMI's annual meeting. I was there. I heard that. It was awesome. I had some questions from the audience that we weren't able to get to, but I was hoping you could give our podcast audience a little background on Champion Now and the work that you do.
Terry Iverson: Sure, Champion Now, I got involved in technical education back in the mid-nineties when Harry Moser, a good friend of mine who founded the Reshoring initiative, asked me to speak to young people about manufacturing and that led to a number of advisory boards in the area and then eventually a position at the CTE Education Foundation in DC. And I was trying to figure out a way of changing manufacturing perceptions, changing American manufacturing perceptions, and then the word champion, the acronym Champion came out, which is Changing American Manufacturing Perceptions In Our Nation. That being said, 2012 I founded the organization, was a 501C3 and it led to writing books in 2018 and 2023. And then during COVID we did produce about 22 educational videos on our YouTube channel. And then most recently, last summer, last fall and this fall to Camp Chan. Mentoring has been at the base of everything that I've done my adult life, even before Champion Now, I was a travel soccer coach for 25 years. In the camp, we mentor middle school children, but we have high school students, CTE students, mentor the middle school students and there's more to the camp, but that's a big component of what the camp is.
Sean Riley: Interesting. That's a good segue to a question that we have from the audience that we wanted to get to and one of them from the annual meeting and it was, we have this manufacturing workforce crisis, we have enough workers, we just don't have them taking the jobs. What is the right age to introduce kids to manufacturing so it has the greatest effect?
Terry Iverson: The general industry basically has started in the high school realm and what I've tried to do since I found a Champion Now is fit in the niche where other people really aren't. So I'm trying to drill down to the middle school students, but even still, I think it's never too late for parents to start doing the investigative work so that when their child does become middle school age, that they're more up to speed of what the reality of manufacturing in this country is as opposed to what their perceptions are. Most parents' perceptions are fairly antiquated and jaded towards the negative side.
Sean Riley: And that seems to be even beyond parents. That seems to be a national thing that we have where manufacturing is still viewed as this dirty, dusty, dangerous position almost from the 1920s or something like that. And as you explained, it's not really the case anymore.
Terry Iverson: No, it's not. I started in 1980, which my gosh, almost 45 years ago now, and the first computer that I actually touched was in college in 1978. And then I had my first laptop or first computer that I used probably in 1984 maybe. So computerization in machine tools was just coming on in 1980, 1981. Automation was so expensive and so far-reaching and so what's happened over the years, gaming has become just a worldwide sensation. In the background, manufacturing has quietly and gradually become more automated, more computerized, more high technology, and all the while the media and the general consensus of the community and our culture hasn't really changed our view from 40 years ago. And so there needs to be a refresh and that's part of my whole Champion Now experience is to actually change those perceptions.
Sean Riley: One thing that you talked about that was really neat that kind of tied that in that I was hoping you could expand on a bit was you had an interesting discussion around virtual twins and gaming and how there's this connection to the billions of gamers that are out there right now in the gaming space and how that could transfer to manufacturing jobs. Is that something you could expand on a bit for us?
Terry Iverson: Well, yeah. As AI comes on, I talked to Barbara Humpton, the CEO of Siemens a while back, and she talked about the digital twin and how Siemens is very vested in that technology. And I think her best example that she gave in the digital twin is the Mars Rover where they're able to replicate the conditions. Obviously, you can't replicate them on Earth, but digitally can replicate and then problem solve and critical think through what could happen or what might happen or will happen when the Rover is actually on Mars surface. That being said, the gamers, they're very into technology. They're very accustomed to thinking on the fly because that's what that skill set is developed. And I think one of the things I think we really slipped in education in general is the critical thinking skills. And if you had to actually pinpoint one skill set that's universal that will help in manufacturing in any job set for any employer and any young person, it's really critical thinking skills. But just to expand with the computerization going on and the automation, there really is an element of intrigue for young people, and it's not until, I think I mentioned in the presentation that it's fairly easy to entice young people to at least give manufacturing a thought. What's really hard is people my age and probably in the late thirties, early forties, they have such a negative connotation because that's all they've ever known that they don't know and they don't think to go out and do research before they actually make a decision for their child, their teenager, or their young adult actually thinking about giving it a shot.
Sean Riley: Yeah, the way you explained it from a computer and technical point of view is I guess I think something like the average age of gamers is like 34 now or something, and it is something where if they had entered manufacturing at a younger age instead of going to college, maybe went right into manufacturing, it's something that sort of mirrors what they're doing as gamers, the technologies they would be using in manufacturing and in our case, packaging and processing.
Terry Iverson: When you talk about gamers and coding, there's a twin situation in terms of technology there, and there's a lot of young people that are actually getting involved in robotics and coding. CNC is technology, whether it be fabrication, turning, milling, additive, subtractive, whatever. Everything's coded and when you break it down, it's really easier than one would think. And I think as the gamers that have now become parents, they had such a negative connotation and they didn't have the connection with gaming and that technology to manufacturing. As they start to become older to the point where their children are becoming late teens and early twenties, they may be more receptive to the connection because they understand the gaming component. My youngest is 35 and he's a gamer, and as his child grows, he'll probably be more likely to make the connection with gaming to manufacturing than say someone in my age bracket or others that are in their late forties, early fifties, they weren't in gaming and they didn't get the connection because they didn't get gaming to begin with.
Sean Riley: And you made an interesting point about how there's a lot of gamers may want to go into computer science or jobs making video games and stuff like that, which don't necessarily exist anymore because there's so many people that want those jobs. Meanwhile, there's all these manufacturing type jobs that use similar skills.
Terry Iverson: Yeah, it's all supply and demand. When everything comes down to the bottom line, careers are supply and demand. Anything where you have a very big demand and a very short supply, the value's going to go up. But I will say this, the value will go up in our industry, but it's going to be the skill set that people have. Their value goes in quantum leaps up, whereas someone's just starting, it's going to be a general rise, but there's lots of people that say, "All right, I want to try this, but I know nothing about it." Employers have to invest in those individuals, those young people and say, "Okay, look, we'll pay for your school, we'll get you mentored up so to speak and trained", but those people that adopted early on and they're in the leading edge very quickly start advancing in skill set, their salary and their bonus and their signing bonuses and all sorts of benefits, they're going to be much higher than those that come in just green as green.
Sean Riley: You touched on it a little bit earlier, but I wanted to expand a bit on automation. It seems to me that there's this myth about automation, that it takes people's jobs and that it replaces people. Kind of something we've heard since robots were invented 30, 40, 50 years ago, that the robots were going to come and they were going to take everybody's job, and I feel like that's a myth that seems to continue to get passed on. Could you speak to that?
Terry Iverson: Let's go back to a point that I made just a minute ago, and that is critical thinking. We need to teach our young people at an early age to critical think because a robot is not going to critically think. As conditions change and as things come across that are problems that need to be solved, it's our experience, it's our emotional ability and reason, intuitiveness and experience that are going to allow us to critical think and problem solve. If you're talking about loading a machine, pushing the button and waiting for it to finish, yes, those jobs are jobs that nobody wants and a robot will do those jobs. Or heavy lifting in the packaging industry, repetitively heavy items. These are things that generally speaking, people, they don't want to get hurt, they don't want to have degradation of their back and physicality. So yes, those jobs are going to be taken. The rest of the story that doesn't get told is that there's all these other positions that people have to be trained into to program the robot, to maintain the robot, to coordinate the cell for the robot for the pick point and the grippers to be changed. And so there's this whole other world that yes, you're going to need skill, but ultimately the numbers show that either there's very little change in headcount or an increase in headcount, and I think less than 10% of those surveyed said that there may be a decrease in headcount. 90% is either the same or an increase in headcount.
Sean Riley: And they're higher-paying jobs.
Terry Iverson: That's the point. When a lot of things were off-shored, we sent way too much over to China, and then thank goodness Harry Moser dove in and initiated the reshoring movement. And then he says, "We need to look at a spreadsheet and really look at the total cost of ownership or the total cost of what your product costs when you consider all facets, including your risk of losing intellectual property." At the end of the day, there are some jobs that are still overseas and a lot of those are low-skilled work that doesn't pay a lot, that isn't a challenging, rewarding skill set that yes, it can be automated. So at the end of the day, yes, people need to be trained. Yes, people need to learn. People need to be open to that, but the jobs that people really don't want that don't pay very well, we want to automate those. And Europe and Germany have been doing this for years way before we have. That will be the future, and that's how we stay globally competitive and we don't have people doing jobs that really aren't desirable to begin with.
Sean Riley: Yeah. I think you had an interesting quote about Germany where someone had said that we had the people to do it, but they had the system set up better.
Terry Iverson: Yeah. It was Mark Tompkins from the German-American Chamber of Commerce. One of the people that worked for him actually was in a meeting with me and said it, and I almost had to chase her down. She's actually interviewed in my second book. I had to chase her down and say, "I need to talk to you about that." And she says, "Give me a call." It's Germany has the system. In other words, the culture, but they wouldn't have the people. The United States of America has the people, but we don't have the culture, we don't have the system. We have close to 333, 335 million people in our country, and that's looking to be over the next 10 years, fairly consistent, maybe grow a little bit. Whereas Germany I think has maybe 90 million and may be going down the 70 million people. But the culture in Europe, the culture in Germany and Switzerland, it embraces craftspeople, tradesmen, it embraces tool and die makers, and it embraces manufacturing in general.
Sean Riley: That's great, and I think that's a good button that we could put on the end of what has been a pretty fascinating talk for me. I appreciate you taking time out of your day to come on here and just give us a little bit more insight into the work that you're doing.
Terry Iverson: I thank you, Sean for the podcast opportunity and I thank PMMI for giving me the opportunity to present at your annual meeting.
