RIVER ROUGE, Michigan — Sarah Messa, plant manager at USG, stood confidently in her safety vest, glasses and earplugs as she guided a recent tour of the facility, which has stood since the 1920s.
“We have a lot of ‘old building, old structure with new technology’ thing going,” she said, pointing at the facility that produces cement board. “We’re doing a lot of work here recently. It’s called Project Home. Our owners and us feel it’s important that people feel comfortable and just as home here at work as they do actually in their homes.”
Among the upgrades: replacing the old windows and sandblasting away old paint to brighten up the spaces. Making the plant more comfortable while remaining safe is a top priority for Messa, who leads the manufacturing operations and a 100-person team.
Messa, 43, who began her career as an electrician with the company 21 years ago, is among a growing group of women working in manufacturing.
As Michigan makes a push to increase manufacturing production and the workforce pipeline in the state, women like Messa could play a vital role in the industry’s growth. Women make up about 28% of the manufacturing field in Michigan, according to United States Census Bureau data released in 2021. That’s slightly lower than the national figure of 30%.
“I think USG always had pretty good representation of women when I started as an electrician down on the production floors and throughout the corporation,” she said. “Now, I would say there has been an increase. USG has put a lot of work into newer technologies, making the jobs less physical. That has attracted a lot of talent as well. … USG has engineering, it has environmental, it has sales, it has marketing, it has logistics. It has a lot of different avenues that females can go into.”
Allison Grealis, founder of Women in Manufacturing, said she’s watched the percentage of women in manufacturing inch up nationally over the past 20 years. WiM is a trade association that supports women in manufacturing jobs. The Ohio-based organization has chapters across the country, including in Michigan.
“Women, present day, make up about 30% of the manufacturing workforce,” she said. “When I first started WiM, we were at about 26%, so there’s been a modest increase — a whopping 4% — but there definitely has been improvement in terms of female representation and leadership.”
About 25% of manufacturing leadership positions are held by women, according to the latest data available from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
“There’s still a ways to go, but there’s definitely been improvement,” Grealis said. “And there’s also been improvement in manufacturing being a bit more progressive and open to some of the things that women in the workplace were desiring. Things like flexibility, opportunity for advancement, and professional development and having affinity groups or communities within their companies where they can network with people like them.”
The Michigan Maritime Manufacturing Initiative recently received $50 million in federal funding to train workers for defense production. A commercial for the initiative features a Rosie the Riveter-type character trying to make a living working odd jobs, including food delivery, until she stumbles upon a maritime manufacturing plant. It gives a nod to women’s roles in factories during World War II and signals that there remains a place for them in manufacturing.
Grealis said some women may not be familiar with what modern manufacturing entails, which presents a challenge in attracting them to the industry. To address this, she said the organization focuses on promoting a contemporary view of manufacturing through storytelling. They share stories of women in the industry through their “Hear Her Story” blog series and a podcast, with the goal of showcasing the innovation and technology in modern manufacturing.
“Our goal is just to inform people of and expose them to what modern manufacturing looks like, which is much different than maybe what was our grandparents’ manufacturing,” Grealis said. “Manufacturing, present day, is very modern in most instances. It heavily leans on innovation and technology. So showcasing that, I think, is really important.”
There is a projected shortage of skilled labor that may result in 2.1 million unfilled manufacturing jobs from 2020 to 2030, according to a 2021 Deloitte Insights report.
Paul Aiello, head of education for Rochester Hills, Michigan-based FANUC America Corp., attributes that to the widening skills gap in manufacturing, which was worsened by COVID-19.
“I think a lot of people were displaced or could not work in manufacturing due to the environment there,” he said. “But what really happened, what made the skills gap get even bigger was traditional organizations like the food industry, the pharmaceutical and medical industry and the e-commerce and logistics industry were not heavily involved in automation at that time and they rapidly had to modify the way that they do business. So they adapted more automation quickly.
“So the traditional manufacturing: automotive, aerospace, different industry manufacturing were now trying to go after the same people that these new verticals: pharmaceutical, food and e-commerce and logistic were trying to go after,” he said. “So everybody is looking for that talented workforce.”
Women’s participation in manufacturing can help curb the talent shortage, and it’s important to challenge the perception of traditional male and female-dominated roles, Aiello said.
FANUC, a robotics supplier, works with students in high school and college through robot programming classes and internships. FANUC recently launched a new $1 million FANUC Automation Endowed Scholarship Fund to support students pursuing advanced manufacturing. The scholarship, in collaboration with the SME Education Foundation, is open to students of every gender, race, background and community.
“Challenging that perception through programs like this is really having an impact,” he said. “And I think it could be more impactful. It’s very interesting. When you walk through FANUC now, there are so many young female engineers, program managers, leadership-positioned people that have come directly through programs, like how we partnered with schools, either through an educational program and internship program.”
Aiello said that hands-on classes help demystify the skills required to operate automation.
“I think a lot of people thought, or had the perception, that manufacturing was something that boys went into, but the reality of it is today’s manufacturing is much cleaner,” he said. “It’s not the dark, dirty, dangerous environments, the perception that a lot of high school students still have. But you’re using your brain to do critical thinking and problem solving and you’re letting the technology do the physical and monotonous work, if you will. So it’s really kind of changing the perception of what manufacturing looks like through hands-on experience.”
Debra Basso, senior manager in robotics research and development for FANUC, has been with the company for nearly 40 years. As she’s worked at the company’s Rochester Hills campus, she’s noticed in recent years more women employees, which she attributes to the increased female participation in the company’s engineering internships.
“I imagine the encouragement from an education standpoint, that women are more exposed to STEM activities, that there is more opportunity for awareness among youth that are embarking on new avenues for education and careers,” she said. “So I think that that has opened the doors to a lot of women realizing that this is a viable opportunity for them.”
FANUC recently celebrated the first year of its first employee resource group, aimed toward women. It’s an effort Basso helped start.
“The Women’s Resource Group, a part of our pillars is to increase recruitment and retention of employees, and we look to recruit and promote areas with STEM involvement and making connections with Society of Women Engineers and Girl Scouts, for example, to try to help them to see that this is a viable career and very rewarding for them to pursue.”
At USG, Messa said that the company offers several employee resource groups, including those focused on women in sales, manufacturing and leadership, as well as groups for Latino, African American and LGBTQ+ employees. These groups are based out of the corporate headquarters in Chicago and extend to the company’s more than 50 manufacturing facilities in North America. There are also annual conferences.
“We do have a women in manufacturing network here,” she said. “All the women at all the plants have a network opportunity. So that’s the nice part of it. I’ve worked with USG for 21 years, and I build a lot of relationships with a lot of other women here and other men here as well. And maybe you don’t see them only once a year, but you become friends enough that you’re in each other’s weddings, that kind of thing.”
USG’s River Rouge facility has 11 women among 100 employees. The facility produces cement board for commercial distribution to stores including Home Depot, Lowe’s and Menards and its mill produces bags of calcium sulfate for uses including cow feed and pet food.
Messa pursued industrial electricity and robotics in community college through USG’s educational reimbursement program. She developed an early interest in how to fix things as she helped her father with household repairs. Her grandfather, who worked as an electrician at USG, also influenced her career path.
“It’s kind of in my blood,” she said.
Hailey Ullett, 22, said it’s encouraging to see Messa in a leadership role. Ullett is among the latest hires at USG in River Rouge.
“That’s really encouraging,” she said. “It’s something that I can look forward to in my career. I don’t feel like I’m going to be stuck. There’s room to grow, advance.”
Ullett began working there as a project engineer in May after studying chemical engineering at Michigan Tech University. Like, Messa, Ullett was made aware of USG and the manufacturing field through a family member employed with the company, her father.
“It was something I didn’t think I would do when I was in school,” she said. “And when I got to my senior year at Michigan Tech, we do a lot more manufacturing-geared education. We have a unit operations lab there where it’s basically a bunch of processes that are shrunk down at a lab size. And I really enjoy that a lot, so that kind of changed my perspective.”
During an internship at the USG Corporate Innovation Center in Chicago, Ullett said she focused on joint compound formulation, but she wasn’t fond of the repetitive nature of the work. She said at the plant in River Rouge she enjoys doing a variety of tasks.
Despite being in a male-dominated environment, with only 11 women at the plant, Ullett said her colleagues have been welcoming and supportive.
“I think it’s just a matter of having that belief in yourself and just go for it and not be scared,” she said. “There might not be as many women here, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t succeed in your career here.”
