The Huron Manufacturing Association has expanded a program that takes grade eleven and twelve students on a tour of various manufacturing operations.
HMA Chair Larry Livingston says the tours that start in May will involve students from the Avon Maitland and the Huron Perth Catholic District Boards. Livingston says the program has been running for several years now with financial support from the Libro Credit Union.
“We've got somewhere over 200 kids going out to different manufacturers within Huron County and this is to get them acquainted with what's available to them out in the real world," Livingston shared.
Livingston says at their age, most of those students are giving some thought to what they want to do after high school, and introducing them to several different types of manufacturing operations might help them with those decisions. Livingston says a lot of people assume manufacturing means big factories full of huge machinery. But he says it could be a mom and pop operation with only one or two employees.
“So they're doing everything from sewing hand bags to like our shop here with fifty – sixty people, we're making threaded pipe fittings. So there's a huge disconnect from what people perceive to what actually is. Especially in your rural areas," added Livingston.
Some of the manufacturing involves the preparing and packaging of agricultural products, but Livingston notes that young people won't know that until they get out and actually see it.
