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To meet the rising skill demands of the dynamic advanced manufacturing (AM) industry, two-year AM programs must produce well-trained graduates. This need is especially marked in Florida because the state is an AM leader, producing intermediate and finished products ranging from plastics to tortillas to motor vehicles. In total, Florida is home to over 20,000 AM companies employing over 320,000 workers. Florida is also geographically diverse, being simultaneously one of the most urban and one of the most rural highly populous states in the country. To characterize Florida's AM employment needs, we sought to determine how AM jobs were distributed across the state. We analyzed 108 job postings from Florida employers who were seeking manufacturing and engineering technicians through publicly available job postings. We used text mining to extract the knowledge areas and verbs in the documents that AM employers identified in job postings and desired from their entry-level employees. We compared those topics and verbs to the ones found in the Florida Department of Education's (FLDoE) AM curriculum framework for two-year programs. We found varying levels of alignment, and, in some instances, misalignment, between employers' desired topics and competency levels and those found in FLDoE Frameworks. Our findings not only highlight the importance of industry-education partnerships to tailor preparation to employer needs, but also suggest that a deeper exploration and analysis of AM jobs is needed to further determine alignment to FLDoE frameworks. We conclude that the FLDoE framework may be used as a foundation, but not the sole source, for important AM knowledge areas. 

In this research paper, we compare Florida’s AM employer demands and academic requirements to state mandated AM curriculum guidelines. Florida is an AM leader, producing intermediate and finished products ranging from plastics to tortillas to motor vehicles. In total, Florida is home to over 20,000 AM companies employing over 320,000 workers. Florida is also geographically diverse, being simultaneously one of the most urban and one of the most rural highly populous states in the country. To characterize Florida’s AM employment needs, we analyzed 108 job postings from Florida employers who were seeking manufacturing and engineering technicians through publicly available job postings. Text mining was used to extract key knowledge areas (or topics) and verbs in these documents that AM employers identified in job postings and desired from their entry-level employees. We compared those topics and verbs to the ones found in the Florida Department of Education’s (FLDoE) AM curriculum framework for two-year programs. We found varying levels of alignment, and, in some instances, misalignment, between employers’ desired topics and competency levels and those found in FLDoE Frameworks. Our findings not only highlight the importance of industry-education partnerships to tailor preparation to employer needs, but also suggest that a deeper exploration and analysis of AM jobs is needed to further determine alignment to FLDoE frameworks. We conclude that the FLDoE framework may be used as a foundation, but not the sole source, for important AM knowledge areas, leaving opportunity for the development of an AM body of knowledge that reflects employer expectations and geographic variations. 

Global economists have cited advanced manufacturing (AM) as one of the fastest growing, dynamic, and economically instrumental industry sectors in the world. In response, many community colleges and undergraduate-serving institutions have established technician education programs to prepare future workers to support AM vitality and innovation. However, in the rush to couple market and training demands, stakeholders have not agreed upon a definition of the field. Without a central notion of AM, the competencies and professional identities of AM workers are likewise unclear. In an effort to address this consensus gap, we undertook an extensive systematic review of AM definitions to chart of sector’s topography, in an effort to understand AM’s breadth and depth. The goals of this study were to: 1) define AM as perceived by policymakers and 2) identify important concepts and contextual factors that comprise and shape our understanding of AM. In this study, we used systematic policy and literature review approach to analyze canonical and research-based publications pertaining to AM’s origins, components, and operational definitions. We classified, compared, and synthesized definitions of AM depending by stakeholder, for example, professional organizations, government agencies, or educational program accreditors. Among our notable findings is that in the eyes of policymakers, manufacturers are advanced not because they make certain products, but because they have adopted sophisticated business models and production techniques. Advanced manufacturers typically use a combination of three factors to remain competitive: “advanced knowledge,” “advanced processes,” and “advanced business models.” This study is both timely and important because in a dynamic field such as AM, educators and industry leaders must work together to meet workforce needs. Clear understanding of AM can inform competency models, bodies of knowledge, and empirical research that documents school-to-career pathways. Both our findings and our methods may shed light on the nature of related technical fields and offer industry and education strategies to ensure their alignment.