American manufacturers need thousands, even tens of thousands, of highly skilled, workers capable of installing, operating and maintaining the new generation of digitally enabled technologies that are changing the face of manufacturing. They need them today, not several years down the road.

Complicating matters is the fact that few of today’s skilled workers, including both production-line veterans and those still in the pipeline, in vocational schools and apprenticeship programs, are developing the adaptive skills our next-generation factories require. These skills go well beyond technical proficiency.

Read the full perspective at forbes.com.