Avon, MA — July 21, 2026
The Old Colony Planning Council (OCPC) brought together voices from AccuRounds, Artisan Manufacturing, the Town of Avon, Avon Public Schools, MassHire Greater Brockton Workforce Board, and Massasoit Community College,— plus students from Massasoit and Brockton High School, who weren’t shy about sharing their own experiences.
A lot of the conversation came back to one thing: perception. Ask most people to picture a factory floor, and they’ll probably describe something dirty, dangerous, and dead-end — an image kept alive more by news headlines about what goes wrong than by the reality of what happens on a typical day. Several panelists pushed back on that, offering a different way to think about it: swap the old “3 D’s” (dark, dirty, dangerous) for the “3 S’s” — safe, smart, and sustainable. As more than one person pointed out, the shop floor is often the safest, most tightly regulated place in the whole building.
So how do you change minds that have been made up for generations? Get people in the door early, panelists said — and younger than you’d think. Mike Tamasi of AccuRounds shared how a tour of the plant with fourth-grade left a lasting impression on students, and both AccuRounds and Artisan Manufacturing talked about the tours and internships they already run. The consensus: by high school, a lot of kids have already written manufacturing off. Middle school, or earlier, is where the real opportunity is.
Technical skills aside, employers keep coming back to the same wish list: communication, critical thinking, self-motivation, attention to detail. The students in the room agreed — several said that hands-on classes like SolidWorks, where they could actually see how what they were learning connected to something real, made all the difference in how engaged they felt.
There’s momentum building on the program side, too. Massasoit has a FY27 Skills Capital grant application in the works for a new digital fabrication lab, and a statewide capstone project requirement is coming for all Massachusetts high schoolers by 2030. Other ideas on the table: more facility tours, teacher externships so educators can see modern manufacturing firsthand, more project-based learning, and closer coordination between employers and schools on internships and job openings.
This roundtable is one of a series happening across the Route 24 corridor, all feeding into the development of the Tech Hub Strategic Plan, funded through Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. OCPC will keep working with towns, schools, and employers up and down the corridor to turn these conversations into real recommendations for building out the region’s manufacturing talent pipeline.
