Could Marion become a center for robotics education and training? That’s the ultimate goal of local businesses and education centers who unveiled their plans to create a robotics education center located at Tri-Rivers Career Center. The center hopes to provide needed skilled labor and put Marion on the map for robotics training.
The program, currently called RAMTECH (Robot and Automation Manufacturing Technology), would be housed at Tri-Rivers, but is a collaboration between the school, local industry, and Marion Technical College and the Ohio State University at Marion.
Chuck Speelman, Tri-Rivers’ superintendent, said the center will include space in the current building along with an additional 5,000 square foot building. Construction is expected to get underway within a month and be completed by the opening of school in September.
Speelman said that robotics has been growing in the Marion area, but said “we were moving at a snail’s pace.” He said this new center will jump robotics training and education to a new level. He said to do that, developing a collaboration between lots of partners was key so that no single group was doing the heavy lifting.
Dave Wagner, Dean of Engineering Technology at Marion Technical College, said the programs envisioned for Marion were modeled after the Mechatronics programs being used in other areas of the country.
Speelman said that once implemented, the RAMTECH program will be one of only two of its kind in the country. The other similar program is in Alabama. He said that uniqueness will set the Marion area apart from other manufacturing areas.
Rich Ramey, Tri-Rivers Engineering Technology instructor, highlighted the growing popularity of robotics in the area as he described The National Robotics Challenge held in Marion this past weekend. He said the contest would feature over 1,000 students from across the country, including 300 from the seven-county area. He also pointed to the 800 area middle school students already getting engineering training. And he said the education is so important to industry that Honda of America was paying to send 35 judges to the robotics challenge.
The importance of robotics and engineering education to industry was highlighted by Paul Aiello of Fanuc Robotics. This is a world-wide company with its headquarters based in Michigan. Aiello described them as being the world’s largest manufacturer of robotics with offices in 32 counties and 270,000 robots in production.
Aiello said there is a large skills shortage. He said the U.S. is still leads the world in manufacturing and is enjoying a resurgence, but the limiting factor is the lack of a skilled workforce. To help with developing those skills, Fanuc is donating equipment and software to help with the RAMTECH program.
Honda of America’s Tech Training Administrator Mark Schmid backed up Aiello’s experiences on finding skilled workers. He said that Honda has developed its own training programs and hopes to see that program rolled into a two-year college degree with the help of the local center. Schmid said that would help Honda in developing the engineering techs because for many employees, going to the local center could be more convenient.
Speelman said that money is always a concern for public school systems, but said that Tri-Rivers would be able to implement the program even as they prepare new budget cuts of nearly a million dollars. He said they are able to do that by following a philosophy of “starve the turtle, feed the rabbit,” meaning they will be cutting unneeded programs to make way for programs of higher value. He said the cuts come as enrollment is expected to be the largest ever for the 2012-2013 year.
Speelman also pointed to the help being provided by the other partners in the collaboration, including the donations of over $400,000 in equipment, software, training, and supplies.
Companies and students interested in learning more about the programs and training to be offered by RAMTECH can contact Tri-Rivers at 740-389-4681 or visit www.tririvers.com.
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