More than half of U.S. manufacturers have significant shortages of highly skilled workers, according to a recent survey by Deloitte, Oracle, and the Manufacturing Institute. With half of the manufacturing workforce expected to turn over during the next decade as baby boomers retire, the need for future manufacturing engineers is great.

That’s a serious concern of future-minded engineers such as Ford Motor Company’s Doug Mitchell, a member of the Rapid Technologies & Additive Manufacturing Community (RTAM) of SME. He believes the shortage is due, in part, to manufacturing engineering not being considered “a glamorous profession like law or medicine.”

Mitchell is working to change that through his involvement in the Bright Minds Mentor Program, developed by the RTAM Education & Information Exchange Tech Group within the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Bright Minds pairs additive manufacturing industry mentors with high school students. This year, the program is sponsored by The Boeing Company and OBJET Geometries. Bright Minds will take place as a part of SME’s RAPID 2010 and 3D IMAGING Conference and Exposition, May 18 to 20, at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, CA.

Students from six local high schools will be introduced to prototyping, tooling, and additive manufacturing industries as prospective career choices. “Last year, we had kids see how the technology can be used to create a physical model of a World of Warcraft (WoW) figure,” says Mitchell. “They could also see how it can be used on the medical side.”  WoW is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) by Blizzard Entertainment.

Beyond Bright Minds, the RAPID 2010 and 3D IMAGING Conference and Exposition also engages young people through the Design for DDM (direct digital manufacturing) Student Design Competition. DDM is a manufacturing process that relies on building parts from 3D computer-aided design (CAD) files or data used in rapid manufacturing.

Winners of this year’s BrightMinds competition will be announced at the RAPID 2010 and 3D IMAGING Conference.