D-Day and Manufacturing
Last week many followed the news coverage of the 80th anniversary of the June 6th D-Day landing at Normandy. The event was more than worthy of recognition for what had transpired that day and what it meant toward ending WWII.
As with many situations, there was a cause that resulted in an effect. Watching the coverage of that event last week reminded me of the books* out there documenting the phenomenal efforts by the American industrial complex to ramp up and manufacture all the tanks, trucks, fighters, bombers, ammunition, ships, and weapons, needed to achieve victory in WWII.
Born from the efforts to pull the country out of the great depression, manufacturing had set about providing cars, refrigerators, furniture, and other consumer items that did not just improve peoples’ lives, they provided good paying jobs and careers IN manufacturing. Those same manufacturing operations that made all those consumer goods were QUICKLY converted to wartime production. THEN they were staffed with all the atypical production workers at home after so many others went to war offshore.
By the way, manufacturing repeated this same feat recently, during the pandemic. Manufacturing overcame supply chain issues and ramped up meeting needs in masks, respirators, and medicine production to overcome the greatest health crisis of modern times.
The unprecedented growth of manufacturing to answer the call to resolve WWII resulted in an era of great prosperity, buoyed by the wages and careers manufacturing offered.
One may be able to make the same claim about the resurgence in recognizing those same opportunities in manufacturing after overcoming the latest pandemic. Renewed interest in REestablishing vocational education in high schools and emphasizing trades careers may be accredited to the recent pandemic. Service providers were saved by the response in domestic manufacturing of supplies, equipment , and medicines. (It also emphasized the lack of trust in off-shore sources of supplies that proved to be fake or inadequate).
PlastiCert is proud of its place in helping promote these same manufacturing opportunities. Through good wages and offering scholarships to area youth, PlastiCert looks to spread the word that a services based economy is not only wrong, but a recipe for disaster for future generations.
*
- Freedom’s Forge How American Business Produced Victory in World War II– Arthur Herman
- Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War – Paul Kennedy
- The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War – A. J. Baime