From its peak in 1995 when more than a half million Tennesseans worked in manufacturing jobs, the Volunteer State shed nearly 238,000 manufacturing jobs over the next 15 years as factories automated processes or moved offshore for cheaper labor. But in the past five years, Tennessee manufacturers have added over 30,000 net new jobs and grown factory jobs 50 percent faster than the U.S. as a whole. In Southeast Tennessee alone, nearly $4 billion of new factories are being built or expanded.
“Manufacturing is alive and well in Tennessee and we want to make sure we continue that momentum,” says Tim Spires, the president of the Tennessee Association of Manufacturers.
From his downtown Chattanooga office, Spires has led America’s oldest manufacturers’ trade group for the past five years and expanded the 113-year-old association from serving Chattanooga manufacturers to a statewide association, renamed in 2013 from the Chattanooga Regional Manufacturers Association to the Tennessee Association of Manufacturers. The group is an affiliate of the National Manufacturers Association and has grown to include about 250 members across the state who rely upon TAM for training, workforce development and public policy advocacy.
Spires, a 56-year-old chemical engineer who grew up on a southern Ohio farm, led plant additions and expansions around the world during a 25-year career with Olin Chemical and later with Nippon Shokubai, Co. Ltd., the parent company of N.A. Industries in Chattanooga. After retiring from Nippon in 2007, he began teaching management courses at the University of Tennessee on business ethics, communication and leadership, sharing lessons he had learned in his career managing chemical plants. He also took a break from manufacturing to become a financial advisor at AXA in 2008, shortly before the Great Recession hit the market.
Spires, who served as the volunteer chair of the manufacturers group a decade ago, was hired in 2010 to become its president. As TAM’s CEO, Spires has maintained his focus on education, and was elected two years ago to the board of the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals as the association’s Southeast representative.
TAM works to encourage more schools and students to pursue manufacturing training and careers to meet the demand for higher skilled workers to staff today’s 21st century factories.
“If you ask anyone of our plant managers or owners what keeps them up at night, they will tell you having a capable workforce,” Spires says.