Asnuntuck Manufacturing Technology Center

AMD editors read this terrific story on-line and wanted to make sure all our AMD readers saw it as well. This appeared as a Special to the Hartford Business Journal By Kathryn M. Roy.

Many business sectors have been hit hard by the economic downturn, but the manufacturing technology industry’s major struggle hasn’t been a reduction in available jobs — it’s the ever-increasing need for skilled workers. 

“It’s literally booming in our area,” said Frank Gulluni, director of the Manufacturing Technology Center at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield. “Jobs are plentiful at this time for people with this skill set. The people in the aerospace industry will tell you, if the talent pool is there, we have jobs for them.”

It was back in the 1990s when Enfield-area aerospace companies began complaining to local officials that they had vacant jobs but no skilled workers to fill them with.

Gulluni, who had founded and operated a facility in Springfield which trained displaced and under-skilled workers, was called in by Raymond Warren, then Enfield’s director of economic development. After three months of meetings involving local officials and representatives from a handful of local aerospace companies, the Asnuntuck Community College Manufacturing Technology Center was born in 1998.

Read the full story here: http://www.hartfordbusiness.com/news15298.html