Are there enough packaging engineers to do the work that needs to be done? Most people would say no. Why not? It could be because of the misperceptions about what a career in engineering means.

Meaghan Ziemba, principal of Mavens of Manufacturing, identifies and tackles these misperceptions to give you insight into how to succeed in either finding and hiring the best people for your open positions, or helping packaging engineers-to-be launch or accelerate their careers.

Today’s technologies might help expand the personnel pool, especially for the younger tech-saavy generations. Like Industry 4.0 connected packaging machines … or robotics.

Oh, and Meaghan and I think it’s time to start a National Robotics League — similar to BattleBots, but at the local level. Let us know if you want to get involved with envisioning the new NRL! Send an email to [email protected].

PACKAGING POSSIBILITIES - Season 2: Episode 18

If you have a topic you’d like to propose for a future PACKAGING POSSIBILITIES episode, please email Lisa Pierce at [email protected].

TRANSCRIPTION IS AUTO GENERATED

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Hello! This is Lisa Pierce, Executive Editor of Packaging Digest, with another episode of Packaging Possibilities, a podcast that reveals what’s new and what’s next for packaging executives and engineers, designers and developers.

In general, the field of engineering in the US struggles to get new people interested in it. Part of this problem, our podcast guest today maintains, is because there’s a misperception of what engineering is and what it entails. So, what is the misperception and why? Then how do we get around it?

I’m pleased to introduce Meaghan Ziemba. Is this surprise #1?! Yes, a female enthusiastically talking about engineering in manufacturing — which is one of the challenges our country’s manufacturing sector faces. That is, how manufacturing and engineering fields are dominated by men and struggle to get females hired on.

Meaghan is helping to change that. In 2020, she started Mavens of Manufacturing, a video and podcast series that, quote, “celebrates women in manufacturing, from the shop floor to the c-suite,” unquote. She’s the founder and owner of Z-Ink Solutions, and has been writing about industrial manufacturing since 2008 — making good use of her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Professional and Technical Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Meaghan is now also a regular contributor to Packaging Digest and we are thrilled to have her on our team.

Hello, Meaghan. So good to talk with you.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Hi, Lisa. Thank you for having me.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Ohh, it’s our pleasure. Definitely our pleasure. So, Megan, let’s jump right in. Tell me what is the misperception about engineering?

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
I’ve heard quite a few throughout my career. One in particular is you have to be a math or technical genius if you want to have a thriving career at engineering, and that’s probably one of the main reasons why I avoided trying to get into engineering because I always tested well in English and not so much in math or science. I like science, but not a big fan of math.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
That explains why you’re a writer then, on the word side, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Right. Umm, my sister got the number gene, I always say.

And then the other one is, you know a lot of intimidating things, as you probably need to go to a four-year university or even get a higher graduate degree to be a successful engineer. And then, you know, engineers are — and this is something I always joke about and I probably should stop doing this — but engineers are socially awkward or you know their careers are confined in one location or one place, which … you know, I’ve met engineers who would rather not talk to a bunch of people, but there are some ambitious ones out there that like to socialize and get to know their communities more.

And then I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the misperceptions for females because it is still pretty much a male dominated industry. However, I am seeing more women get involved with engineering, especially at the top leadership positions that are available. So that’s great.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Really?! OK.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Yeah, it’s a slow change, but it is a change that’s happening, which is really exciting, especially during this time. But you know, for women especially, you know, the misperceptions are that if you want to be an engineer, you can’t have a family. You can’t use your creative side. And if you’re women in this space, there’s not a lot of opportunity for career growth or you won’t have equal pay. And some of these things, while true in the past, again, as I mentioned, they’re slowly changing. So it is getting better. But even with everybody included …

Lisa McTigue Pierce
That’s good.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Yeah, even with everybody including, you know, there’s still those negative stereotypes that it’s kind of a nerdy place to be and it’s dull or dingy or not exciting. And this isn’t the case anymore, especially with all the advancements in technology.

“There’s still those negative stereotypes that it’s kind of a nerdy place to be and it’s dull or dingy or not exciting. And this isn’t the case anymore, especially with all the advancements in technology.”

Lisa McTigue Pierce
OK. I know we’re going to get into that in a little bit, but before we get there, I wanted to just comment about your … what you said about creativity, because I too am a word … more of a word person. I have a little bit of the number annual gene from my father, who was an engineer for AT&T, but not really. It’s like my math, I … it’s logical to me how I do my math but it’s not what they teach in school. I gotta be honest with you but so as a word person — and somebody who also likes a lot of the arts, music and painting and sculpture and all that — I always thought that those people, artists, were the most creative people out there, until I got into this job and I started talking to engineers. Because when it comes to problem solving, engineers are the most creative people I have ever seen. They love to just get into a problem and solve it, which is really cool to see.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Yeah. And I think that’s where the misperception comes from because people separate critical thinking and problem solving from creativity. But you have to be creative to problem solve and critically think of solutions that, you know, other people might not be able to see. So I think attaching those or connecting them somehow is really important, especially when we’re trying to market what the possibilities are within engineering and manufacturing.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
I did want to ask you about one other thing. You said that the engineer today doesn’t necessarily have to be heavy in math. Why is that? Are the tools different? Are the processes diff …? Why is that? I’m just, you know … I don’t know the answer, so that’s why I’m guessing.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
I think you have to have basic knowledge of math and maybe some geometry or algebra. Again I was always guided to take precalc or some sort of calculus. And I’ve talked to other engineers, specifically women engineers, who are like I don’t really use the calculus stuff that I went to school for. Like I use more of like the geometry and the basic algebra stuff. I don’t even remember the names cause this is how terrible I am at math. But it’s like the sine and cosine — all that information is basically what they’re using. But they said if you have a basic understanding and grasp of that algebra stuff and the geometry stuff, that’s pretty much what you need to be a good engineer. And I think there’s this misperception that you have to have much more than that. I think if you can add and subtract and multiply and get the basics down for geometry and algebra, you should have a good opportunity to be a great engineer.

But again, with all the advancements in technology and the way things are programming, there’s more behind engineering than just adding, subtracting, dividing, multiplying numbers. There’s a lot of like platforms for design and having a basic understanding of a design, as well, is really important for some of these CAD drawings that engineers are putting together and figuring out. And a lot of those calculations from my experience, seem to be done automatically within those tools …

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Yep.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
… so again, you don’t have to be a math whiz to really view some of these tools. It’s just put plugging in numbers.

Now, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don’t know. I mean, there’s some people that can program CNC machines, while there’s other people that operate them, which means they’re just pushing the buttons. They’re not really knowing the program. But would it be a benefit to know how to program a CNC machine? Probably, because if something fails, you’ll have a better way of figuring out where that failure is coming from. So I’m not trying to discourage anyone from being good at math. I’m just saying if it’s not one of your strong suits, that’s not really going to …

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Don’t let it hold you back, right?

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Yeah, don’t let it hold you back. See what other opportunities are available. And you know, it’s not a bad thing to practice things, to become a little bit better and improve those skills. But don’t let it discourage you from trying something out and seeing how you like it.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
OK, along the same line, in a previous podcast that I did, I talked with somebody who was talking about the different tools that are out there and he mentioned Blockly for example …

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
OK.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
… as far as like assembling engineering operations. But so one of the things that I got out of that is that maybe companies when they’re looking for packaging engineers instead of only looking at STEM school graduates … or to be honest with you, there’s a lot of companies that fight over the graduates from the packaging schools, rightly so. They’ve got that singular education. But we advised companies to maybe even start recruiting talent from Google, because computers and data technologies are heavily going to be in … they’re growing now, but very heavily I see that as the future of manufacturing in general and then spilling over into engineering and packaging engineering specifically.

What do you think of that suggestion to look at computer and data technology, people who have experience with that?

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
I think it’s a great suggestion because I believe that just because someone is in a niche area doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re a right fit for that area. So people are going to go where they’ve been guided to go. So depending on who their mentors are or what sort of community they’re involved in, that’s going to kind of shape what their life experiences and what their passions are. And they might not know of these opportunities that exist.

So, as you mentioned, with all the advancements in technology and how things are getting so digitized, I think that’s a great skill to have on the technology software side of things. And that’s where manufacturing is going. Like everything is getting more and more connected and you’re going to need those data scientists and the data analytics and someone who knows how to work with those platforms and tools and know how to interpret that information. So just because they might not seem like they’re fit for the packaging area, they actually might be the best fit just because of those additional skills that they have.

“… with all the advancements in technology and how things are getting so digitized, I think that’s a great skill to have on the technology software side of things. And that’s where manufacturing is going.”

From my experience and just getting to talk with people, especially from the younger generations, they’re really quick learners and they can adapt their skills really quick and efficiently. So just because they’re in that technology space, I feel like once they get that training that they need to know more about the packaging area, they’re going to pick it up really quick and it’s going to be a huge asset to those companies that are combining those forces.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Great. You know, that actually was going to be another question that I was going to ask is … if you do look for a packaging production engineer in unusual places, does that necessarily mean that you’re … that these companies are going to have to invest more in the special training to teach them. But you are right. I have seen … some of the students that I’ve talked with these days and just young people in general, they are … I think to myself: Do I think slowly now that I’m aging or what? Because they think so quickly. They take an idea and they just, I don’t even think run is the right description for what they do once they get a hold of an idea. They just totally take off with it. They’re flying now. They’re not running, they’re flying.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Yeah. Well, and it’s because of the technology that they have in their hands. Every … most people have a smartphone that’s connected. And with just the experience that I have with my daughter, she researches everything before she makes a purchase. And I think that’s really important for companies to keep in mind as well, too.

These generations that are coming up have done their research and they’re going to look into your companies, especially when they’re ready for their careers. And if you’re not matching the values that they have for themselves, they’re not going to consider you for employment. And you know, a lot of them want that continuous training. They want that education, they want to be able to move up in their career pathways. And if you’re not offering those training opportunities or continuous improvement opportunities, they’re going look somewhere else that does provide those things.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Yeah.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
So you gotta really look at what your core values are as a company and figure out if they’re matching. Because it’s not about the current generation anymore. We gotta start planning for 2030 and 2034 and beyond. And that’s, you know, Generation Z and Generation Alpha that we have to look into. So what are their core values and how are we going to adapt to match those core values so that we can start closing the skills gap.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
OK. I’m glad you brought that up, because just earlier this week I read an article that I saw on LinkedIn talking about frontline workers or, you know, entry level and what matters to them as far as whether they accept a job or not. The number one thing that was important to them was this advancement and continuous improvement for them. Because they know that this is an entry level job and they’re already looking at … you know, they’re not satisfied with the entry level. They’re looking to advance, which is good.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Umm.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
So knowing what advancement opportunities a company can offer is pretty important. That was actually even more important than … what is it that comes with the pay — benefits! That was more important than the benefits that you offer, being able to have that career advancement.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Yeah.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
From the very beginning.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
And it’s interesting too, because you know, with the Millennials we had that Great Resignation that happened in 2021, where people are leaving their jobs. And it was because they weren’t happy with the work culture or the benefits or the career advancement. So they figured out, I can do my own research with all this technology available. And I can find somewhere else to work.  And it’s the perfect time to really try that out because we have this major skills gap. So if you’re not happy with where you’re at, it’s a great time to maybe leave that place and go somewhere else because so many people are looking for good, talented workers.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Yes, they are.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
So it’s kind of a perfect storm, I guess.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Before we hear Meaghan’s ideas for how companies can get around these misperceptions about engineering, let’s take a short break for a special message.

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Lisa Pierce here with Packaging Digest. If you are enjoying this podcast, I’ve got good news for you. There are more episodes with insights from other packaging executives at brand owner companies, including tuna giant Bumble Bee Foods, food and confections leader Mars, alcohol-beverage manufacturer Absolut, and snack-king Frito-Lay. Find these and other conversations at packagingdigest.com/packaging-possibilities-podcast. Now, back to our current episode to learn more.

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Lisa McTigue Pierce
OK. So let’s try to give a couple of solutions here. We have this misperception about engineering, which you laid out. You gave, I think, four or five really good reasons what the misperceptions are. So if a company needs packaging engineers, what do they need to do to get around those misperceptions?

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
This is something that I talked about when I was at the Advanced Manufacturing Expo.

Companies need to be more proactive, especially how they’re marketing to the younger generation. So they can’t just be focused on their customers. A lot of companies have a marketing budget that mostly targets who their potential leads and customers are. They don’t really have a marketing budget on how to reach the communities that they’re residing in or the kids that live within those communities. So they really need to start thinking about what sort of opportunities they can get involved with to start educating the families and the students and the educational institutions within their communities. Because there is a disconnect, too, on how we’re still teaching engineering and manufacturing to what it actually is, to work in a career pathway on the shop floor. So I’ve heard so many stories about kids not knowing who the companies are within their communities because they just don’t do any community outreach. So that needs to happen. So think about where you can volunteer, what events you can create yourself. October is a big manufacturing month.

I believe there’s an engineering week too. I just can’t remember what month there is. But focus on opportunities like that to create events, open up your doors, invite people to come into your facility, do a cookout, order pizza or something. If you have food trucks in your community, bring them along. There’s really a lot of ways that you can put a small amount of money towards, to really get your community excited and be brand advocates for you. You want to think about, OK, how can I be a cool brand like Nike or Harley-Davidson? We really have to start thinking that way to get the next generations really excited about who we are. So thinking out-of-the-box.

The other one is …

Lisa McTigue Pierce
I love that, Megan. Before you go into the next one … I just celebrated my 40th anniversary of being a packaging media journalist. And one of the things that I talked about was an early experience that I had as I think I was, you know, five or six years old. My dad took me and my sisters to the Kellogg plant in Battle Creek … this is going back a couple decades. So that was the good old days when they used to have public tours of their cereal facility. And I swear … I still remember the whole experience of it. The the noise of the machine running and just the just the whole experience of it. And I really do think I’m doing what I’m doing now because of that experience. So I agree wholeheartedly, that I know there are security and safety issues with opening up facilities to let people in, kids in. But Ohh my goodness. Meaghan, that would be so totally awesome …

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Yeah.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
… to get these kids excited about manufacturing again.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
And you know, if there is security or safety issues where you can’t allow a certain age group to come in your facility, there’s other ways for you to get in front of them. So First Robotics is one of my favorite organizations that I like to talk about, just because it not only involves the engineering and manufacturing of the robot, but it’s building a team and working together as a team, it develops leadership skills. It develops organizational skills.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Mm-hmm.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
They have the teams basically set-up a mini business for their robot. And there’s ways that manufacturers and engineers can set-up mentorship programs …

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Umm.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
… to actually go into schools, not just high schools, but, you know, elementary and middle schools, and be that mentor for those kids and develop a robotics team. It’s not that hard to set-up. You can contact First Robotics.

If you don’t want to do something like that, what other types of mentorships can you provide? How can you connect with the schools? One of the high schools within my community, they’re really struggling right now because they’re losing a lot of teachers in the votech program to retirement.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Umm.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
So how if they lose those teachers and they can’t fill those positions, they’re going to lose the classes, which means they’re going to lose the budget. And it's really hard to get all of that back once it's gone. So how can we keep those programs going, in terms of bringing someone in to teach the kids those basic skill sets within those programs that are available.

So I had a suggestion to the high school that I’m working with in my local community. What if you partner with one of the manufacturers who’s using CNC machining and maybe have them volunteer their time to come in for an hour or two from one of these courses and help teach the kids CNC? Or what if they set up like a classroom setting in their facility, because they have this big facility with all these conference rooms, where your kids take a trip during that class block and learn on site at that facility?

So now they’re thinking, OK, how can we create these partnerships with the local manufacturers so that we can keep these classes going. And the pandemic did a great thing for us. I know it isolated all of us. But it opened up those virtual opportunities. So even if they can’t do the transportation, there’s a way to set up a virtual meet-and-greet where an expert can come in on screen and teach a class while it’s sitting there in front of the monitor.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Yep.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
That’s just my personal opinion. So thinking of ways like that.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Yeah, video, video for training and all of that is going to be important, more important even, going forward, I get that. But I really love the hands-on learning and training because that’s, I think, where you get a little bit more of the enthusiasm, especially when you’re talking with the kids. Yeah.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Absolutely.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Not to get too far off on a tangent here, but when you started talking about robotics and the teams and everything, I just have to ask … Meaghan, do you watch BattleBots?

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
I do. I haven’t watched it very frequently. It’s funny that you ask that cause my brother and I just saw an episode like three days ago, three or four days ago, and we were just totally geeking out over it. Because it’s just so cool. The different types of robots that they create and the stuff that’s on them to, to have the battle. And it’s not just one age group, that it’s like a variety, a wide range, so.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Yes.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Umm, it was really. Yeah. It’s just a fun thing to watch. And I wish they had, like, local events where it could be like a sporting event for communities to go and watch instead of having to watch it on TV because I really feel like that would be a cool way to get people excited about what’s going on in engineering and manufacturing. And you can market it like a professional sports team. Like, there’s so many different opportunities you could do with that. So that’s like one of the things I’m trying to preach is …  

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Yeah.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
… let’s make manufacturing and engineering fun and like an actual sport where we’re bringing kids in and they’re building these solutions.

“… let’s make manufacturing and engineering fun and like an actual sport where we’re bringing kids in and they’re building these solutions.”

Lisa McTigue Pierce
OK. Meaghan, you and I, we just, we just did this. The NRL, the National Robotics League. We’re going to start it, you and me. We’re going to …  

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
That would be awesome.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Yes. Get like, I don’t know, eight cities started and, you know, go from there.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
I’m writing that down. We’re going to come back to that.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
OK, so I was asking you how to companies who need packaging engineers get around these misperceptions and you were going into another point that you were going to make.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Oh.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Do you remember where we were before we started talking about BattleBots?

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Ah.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Sorry about that.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
I’m trying to think. No, I don’t. I just think that we need to do a better job marketing what modern-day engineering is. And you know, a lot of people, when they think packaging, I don't think they understand the complexities that are involved with packaging.

I met a SolidWorks champion around the beginning of this year. And she works at Ashley Furniture. And one of the things that she did to bring more girls into her space was she developed this sort of like assembly line where they created their own bracelets using CAD. So they trained them a little bit on the basics of CAD and then they made their own bracelets. And then the last thing they did was they had to create their own packaging to put their bracelets in.

Packaging has a lot of purposes that we take for granted and we’re not thing, we’re just used to like getting something new and ripping that package over and either recycling it or throwing it away, maybe keeping it to gift to someone else for something else. But there’s a lot of reasons why packages are created the way that they are, and there’s a lot of custom packaging solutions too that can get really complex. And we need to show that to people, especially younger kids, so that they can start getting excited about why it’s important to be creative and think of these solutions.

So I think especially within the packaging space, it just … no one thinks of it cause it’s something we used every day, but we really don’t understand why it’s important. Like with this. I have great con headphones and I love this packaging. I couldn’t throw it away because it’s got a magnet on it. It’s a good carrying case. I know we’re on audio, so people can’t see this, but it’s just a solid piece of packaging and it kept my headphones safe. So.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Well, hold it up. Hold it up. I’ll do a screen shot and then they can see it. OK, great. Thank you. That’s good.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Yeah. So. We have to do a better job marketing our brand narrative. I know a lot of people hear about brand stories, but brand stories are really business centric. They’re basically the history of why companies started, what the foundations are of the company. But a brand narrative actually links customer stories in as well. It makes the customer the hero of those little stories.

One of the metaphors that I heard was that, if you think of brand stories as pearls on a necklace, each pearl is a brand story. And then the brand narrative is the string of those pearls, bringing everything together.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Nice. Yes.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Nike does a really good job of doing that. Harley-Davidson does a really good job of doing that. So how can manufacturers take advantage of a brand narrative where they’re bringing in different groups and getting them to feel some type of way about the products that they’re selling? You want to create that urgency of being a part of the product. Apple does a fantastic job of that. I’ve never seen so many people sit in the line overnight that wasn’t a concert. It was over a phone. I was completely flabbergasted by it, but that’s what Apple does. They make people feel like it’s necessary to have their products, and that’s brand narrative, it’s customer centric.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Yep, and Apple packaging … most people keep it whether, you don’t really need it again. It’s just so beautiful, you don’t want to throw it out.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Yeah, it’s so great.

Lisa McTigue Pierce
Yeah, too funny. OK, well, Meaghan, I think you have given us a lot to think about. And I know that now that we’re going to be working together regularly, you’re going have a lot more … I'm going to say … pearls of wisdom on some other, you know, narrower topics as we get into it, including the next one, I think, is where we’re gonna focus in on trying to appeal to females in the engineering side. So I’m really looking forward to that. But thank you so much for letting me pick your brain on this first go round and appreciate you giving us your time too.

Meaghan Ziemba (guest)
Thank you, Lisa. This is fun and I’m really excited to continue working with all of you.