DOD-Supported Workforce Development Program Pushes Manufacturing Careers

Technology is moving rapidly, continually impacting areas like the military and requiring the best and brightest to innovate and make the United States military viable. That’s where LIFT comes into play.

LIFT is a nonprofit public-private, Department of Defense-supported national advanced materials and manufacturing innovation institute based in Detroit, Mich., and one of eight DOD national Manufacturing Innovation Institutes to accelerate technology with three main objectives.

One objective, according to LIFT Executive Vice President of Public Affairs Joe Steele, is to accelerate technology on behalf of warfighters and the broader defense industrial base, getting things off the cutting room floor and manufactured for widespread commercialization.

That involves manufacturing for the U.S. military within the nation’s boundaries, to ensure as Steele put it “that we're all singing from the same song sheet and making sure that we are doing things on behalf of the warfighter and their needs.”

The last primary goal is to operate education workforce development programs and provide the next generation of advanced manufacturing workers the knowledge, skills and abilities to thrive.

These objectives are being accomplished through LIFT’s Operation Next program, a rapid credentialing program that gets individuals certified in jobs that are most in demand today, such as welding, machining, industrial technology maintenance, and robotics. 

“Operation Next was born as a program a number of years ago to give back to our service members,” Steele told Military.com. “It was actually piloted at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, and it was a way to give back to our service members. … So, when they left the gates, it wasn't, ‘Hey, good luck, go find a job.’

“It was, you have a credential in hand and you will go find a job immediately because these credentials are industry recognized and nationally portable.”

The program that started in 2018 has evolved over the years, he said, and in some instances is now open to not just separating service members, but military families, Guard and Reservists, veterans and civilians.

Boosting Manufacturing in the 21st Century

Operation Next, a program created years ago with support of the Department of Defense, made recent news when the adult training program collaborated with Southeastern Community College (SCC) and successfully certified 40 adult learners in advanced manufacturing skills.

Those students earned industry-recognized Smart Automation Certification Alliance (SACA) and Manufacturing Skills Standards Council (MSSC) certifications, aimed to strengthen the area’s talent pipeline as part of the Pentagon’s encouragement to more swiftly rebuild the U.S. military by enhancing the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) and the Organic Industrial Base (OIB).

Steele said it's about efficiency and consistency, whether there's work to be done in automation, robotics, helping make munitions and explosives.

There's a lot of emphasis around modernizing these facilities because they maybe haven't been modernized since they were built 50 years ago. There's an emphasis in bringing these facilities up to newer technologies.

That impacts manufacturing facilities like the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, and by proxy its workforce in the surrounding community. Steele said that can be tricky considering the isolation of some communities, often in more rural and less urban settings.

“Providing opportunities like Operation Next in a place like Middletown, Iowa, around the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant is about making sure that that pipeline of talent has the knowledge, has the skills, and has the abilities to go work in those plants right now today,” he said, adding that “upskilling” is not just about technology but the individuals who utilize it.

Facilities 'Struggling' to Meet Long-Term Demands

That begs the obvious question: How can the U.S. manufacturing industry, and by virtue the military defense sector, convince individuals to forego traditional routes leading to higher education and instead encourage more people, notably young folks, to enter the trades?

Steele said that all of their industrial members are currently “struggling” to find enough workers to meet these demands. The paradigm shift from traditional post-high school career routes that was pushed about a decade ago hasn’t become what some industry experts hoped.

Steele said that may be due to misconceptions about manufacturing. 

There may just not be enough people choosing to go into manufacturing as a career choice.

“But one of our goals is to show them that it is smart, it is digital, it is innovative, it is an exciting place to work. And these are careers where you can you can go into without having had to go to a four-year university necessarily.”

Instead, a community or technical college could become a more viable path.

Lift also promotes Ignite Mastering Manufacturing, a high school program showing students various opportunities across advanced manufacturing, whether it’s robotics, electronics or hydraulics—all part of different kinds of techniques, tools and opportunities that can be accessed at a young age, as part of a hands-on experience.

Recruitment Involves Input at All Levels

Obviously, human bodies are necessary to keep these facilities and the entire industry afloat—even in an age of accelerated artificial intelligence.

Steele was asked what the younger generation looks like as a future workforce, notably as such people lack the real-world experience and skills possessed by older individuals or those who have spent years in manufacturing.

“It's funny you ask that because at our learning lab here in our Detroit facility, there's not a day that goes by that I don't see a school bus outside of our facility bringing students in—whether it be for a field trip, whether it be for a boot camp, a look around or participating in our Ignite program.”

Most of the curriculum in the Ignite and Operation Next programs are hybrid, providing online components and visualized methods of welding, for example, to give a sense of the skill before actually applied.

“We really start them off with a virtual welding component that we have here at Lift, where you wear a mask, you wear a welding mask, you hold a welding torch, but it's virtual,” he said. “You're looking inside the mask, you're looking at a screen and it'll tell you that you're moving too fast or that your angle is incorrect, or that you're too far away from the workpiece.”

He described it as “gamification” because the virtual component even provides a score to indicate progress and acumen. In effect, it naturally creates competition which in turn betters skills with more frequent practice.

Recruitment maintains a burden for many companies, affecting the manufacturing industry as a whole. Steele essentially said it takes a village.

For example, while Lift is a 45-person outfit, it has hundreds of partners nationwide that can help discover the next generation of talent in schools and communities. It’s also about meeting a specific community’s needs, whereas one town may require more welders than machinists or vice versa.

“The benefit is working with all those partners to bring the students in, whether they be high school students or whether they be adult learners,” he said. “The challenge is that folks just don't know what advanced manufacturing looks like and feels like in 2026. 

“They may imagine some black-and-white film that they saw back in the day, or hearing stories from their grandfather or father who may have worked in manufacturing. Things are different, things are digital, things are cleaner, things are agile—and they just might not know what it looks like. That is a challenge to overcome.”