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Relating manufacturing activities to creative thinking will be news to students. Point out the fact that manufacturing careers include ample opportunities to work on product improvement, resulting in products that are safer, more environmentally “friendly” and better matched to their intended function. Other career options also include identifying and testing the most durable, strongest, safest and most environmentally friendly mate- rials for products. Remind students that problem-solving and critical thinking skills come into play frequently! Another new message we need to communicate to students is the under-appreciated role that the design process plays in manufacturing. Teachers need to know that creative minds are called for here! Design- ing successful, innovative and usable products that meet the needs of the customer, is obviously a big part of manufacturing, but that will not be apparent to educators and students. Finally, building a partnership with your local school to promote manufacturing as a career path includes “bragging rights”. Make it a point to let everyone in your partner school know that careers in manufacturing require dedi- cated, creative professionals, and that you are proud of your product and the people that make it! Advanced manufacturing as a “hands-on” profession Today’s manufacturing industry continues to highly value employees’ ability to work st with their hands. For the work in the early decades of the 21 century, the word “hands -on” has a very different meaning than it has in the past. Today there are still many manufacturing jobs that primarily involve skilled, technical, hands-on work, but that work is performed in modern clean, organized, neat, climate-controlled, and well-lit facilities. Additionally, since some, if not all equipment is now partially, or fully- automated (controlled by computers), we have to re-define “hands-on” for manufactur- ing and high tech industries and re-educate the public accordingly. One “hands-on” challenge manufacturers needs to address is summarized in a Nuts, Bolts and Thingamajigs (NBT) Poll. The results demonstrated that young people are “non- tinkerers” and 60 percent of the respondents indicated that they avoid major household repairs, preferring instead to hire others to complete them. The poll also reported that 58 percent of respondents had never made or built a toy; and 57 percent indicated that they had average or below aver- age skills at fixing things around the house. The data clearly shows that teens don’t have enough role models to encour- age them to repair and build things themselves, nor have they experienced the pride of building or repairing some- thing useful. 13