There exists greater issues in hiring for manufacturing when it is for new shifts. Master level technicians and foremen willing to work those hours can be exceptionally difficult to find, and everything flows out of these people. While similar issues likely exist relating to discovering talent for software development, I speculate that the factory will, in practice, have a harder time finding people (for new shifts).
My experience with seeing new shifts added is initially with only specific processes, and even with those it is with journeyman level technicians running a small crew to support relieving a bottleneck in production.
Alternatively, manufacturers can outsource until they have enough volume to add a shift, but across the economy the net is just transferring production from one facility to another.
While the surpassing is true, something I've found interesting is that across very different industries that have nothing to do with one another, and including publicly traded and private (though still huge) companies, I have heard directly from buyers that top management has given them a directive to find new suppliers in China.
From a supply chain management perspective, this does not make sense. The directive should be something like "find the best suppliers on the planet."
I've never worked in tech, but I've worked at manufacturers of various different sizes and places in the manufacturing supply chain, including finished goods.
Manufacturers can't hire beyond the places in production that someone can stand and do something. There needs to be some kind of equipment or process for worker to contribute in some meaningful way, even if it is merely for a projection of increased production (e.g., hiring a second shift for a facility currently running one shift).
What I wonder is if in tech, the "equipment" is a computer that supports everything a developer needs. From there, new things can be added to the existing product.
Manufacturing equipment is generally substantially more expensive than a computer and supporting software, though not always. Might this contribute to the differences, especially for manufacturing that normally runs 24-hour shifts?
I didn't look at the PDF, but the sample size reported in the article is 11 ships(!), which makes me wonder how this might look across a larger population of ships.
I wonder how much labor expense has to be saved to make up for a future catastrophic event?
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