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Greenville Technical College is betting big on artificial intelligence (The Job).  

What’s going on: The school—located in eponymous Greenville, South Carolina, where manufacturing is big business—is building a “new center that aims to bridge manufacturing and AI.”

• “We still want to prepare students in the old, traditional way, but also incorporate those different skill sets and data analytics into the whole process,” said Kelvin Byrd, dean of the college’s School of Advanced Manufacturing and Transportation Technology.
• Greenville has more than 1,000 manufacturing companies with more than 30,000 employees—and the average annual pay is $78,000.

Meeting skilled-workers demand: Those firms—among which is defense contractor Lockheed Martin—were the impetus for the college to open a high-tech manufacturing campus a decade ago.

• Now, Greenville Tech “is looking to replicate that investment for a world of manufacturing driven by AI. … It is seeking $30M in state funding to finish work on the new center focused on industrial cybersecurity and AI.”

Digital’s role: Greenville is onto something important with its new center, Manufacturing Institute Chief Program Officer Gardner Carrick told the publication. (The MI is the NAM’s 501(c)3 workforce development and education affiliate.)

• “‘They’re recognizing that it’s coming,’ Carrick says, noting that demand for digital skills has risen during the past decade along with automation. Workers don’t do coding for machines on the factory floor, he says, but they need to know how to use digital components of those machines. ‘It’s evolutionary, not revolutionary.’”

The “team sport model”: Manufacturers don’t need to be mammoth-sized to reap the benefits of being near a college that’s turning out graduates with digital skills, Carrick said.

• “[A] similar approach can work with the industry’s much more common small employers, who may hire a couple entry-level workers per year,” the publication reports. “The Manufacturing Institute encourages a ‘team sport model’ where manufacturers work together to build close ties with the local community college. ‘You need to aggregate the demand across companies,’ says Carrick.”
• These partnerships are ideally operational, where through internships and apprenticeships, community college students can see firsthand what skills they’ll need on the front lines of manufacturing.