Ohio’s latest opportunity to help close the two million skilled workers that will be needed to close the Manufacturing Gap was successfully implemented this past summer at the Marion area Tri-Rivers Career Center’s Robotics Advanced Manufacturing Technical Education Collaboration known as (RAMTEC). Nine RAMTEC Ohio facilities have been completed through a $14,955,000 Ohio Department of Education grant called the Straight A Fund. These sites are all modern “state of the art” facilities that have the latest and most advanced manufacturing tools from our largest automation and robotic suppliers.

RAMTEC was created to provide a technically trained, highly skilled workforce to promote the creation and expansion of business and industry through robotics and advanced manufacturing technologies. Over the next decade, it is estimated that nearly 3.5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs will be needed and 2 million of those jobs are expected to go unfilled due to manufacturers’ inability to find talent with the required skills. These numbers dramatically underscore the importance of introducing as many people as possible to the significant role played by manufacturing in Ohio and the entire nation.

More than 50 RAMTEC Ohio secondary and adult career technology instructors from these nine facilities completed more than 2000 hours of industrial credentialing courses that enables them to award credentialing courses to our next generation of manufacturing technicians and engineers starting this fall. They are training in the same advanced training rooms that more than 200 manufacturing technicians have trained in robotics, hydraulics and Programmable Logic Controls since the Marion RAMTEC center opened for training in February of 2014. The other sites are Miami Valley, Great Oaks, Penta, Pioneer, Tolles, C-TEC, Portage Lakes and Cuyahoga Valley.

Each site will have credentialed training in FANUC and Yaskawa Motoman Robotics, Allen-Bradley and Mitsubishi PLCs, Parker Hydraulics and FANUC CNC. All RAMTEC sites will also receive 3D printers, Laser engravers, Vex Robotics labs, Arduino Digital Manufacturing Kits that will serve a dual role in their labs and in their new mobile lab based trailers.

Students from more than 120 school districts will have access to the RAMTEC training centers. Because of the partnership with these leaders in the manufacturing field RAMTEC will continue to have the latest training equipment that will enable students to learn to use the latest equipment used in the highly competitive manufacturing careers.

by Ritch Ramey  – RAMTEC Ohio Coordinator