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Industry Opinion
Factories Are Not Classrooms—But They Must Become Them Again
By Joe Altieri, FIT Adjunct Professor, Mentor, Educator, and Trainer
The apparel industry is talking—again—about reshoring.
New facilities. Advanced equipment. Automation. Digital systems. Investment capital is beginning to move, cautiously, back toward domestic production. The conversation is gaining momentum, and for the first time in decades, rebuilding the U.S. apparel manufacturing base feels within reach.
But there is a question that is still not being asked with enough urgency: Who is going to run these factories?
Because an industry is not rebuilt by facilities alone—it is rebuilt by the people who know how to operate them.
And right now, that capability is in short supply.
The Missing Layer in the Reshoring Conversation
Much of the current discussion around reshoring focuses on infrastructure where factories will be located, what technologies will be installed, and how supply chains will be structured. These are important questions and necessary ones. But they assume something that no longer exists at scale: a workforce that understands how production systems actually function. Factories do not run on software alone. They do not operate on theory. They require people who understand flow, sequencing, material behavior, labor balance, quality control, and the dozens of small decisions that determine whether production works—or fails. That knowledge was once developed in a place we rarely talk about anymore: the factory floor. What Factories Used to Be There was a time when factories were not just places of production. They were places of learning. Engineers, supervisors, and managers did not enter the industry fully formed. They developed through exposure—by working inside active production environments where problems had to be solved in real time. In my own experience, that education did not happen in isolation. While studying production management, I worked in multiple factories across Philadelphia. In one facility, I helped redesign a plant layout. In another, I conducted time-and-motion studies and supported the installation of a tunnel press system. In a third, I worked in production planning and helped define the role of a factory expeditor. These were not academic exercises. They were operational realities. They required understanding not just what needed to be done, but how systems behaved under pressure—when materials didn’t perform as expected, when labor fluctuated, when schedules compressed, when decisions had consequences. That is where production knowledge was built. Not in theory. In motion. What Factories Have Become Today, most remaining domestic factories operate under very different conditions. They are lean, pressured, and optimized for output. There is little room for observation, experimentation, mentorship, and structured learning. Production must move. Orders must ship. Margins are tight. Under these conditions, factories are no longer environments where knowledge is developed. They are environments where production is executed. Efficiently, yes. But there is no built-in mechanism to train the next generation. The Execution Gap No One Wants to Address This creates a problem that sits beneath every reshoring conversation: Even if we build the factories, we do not yet have enough people who know how to run them. We need:• production managers who understand workflow• technical designers who understand manufacturability• industrial engineers who understand time and motion• operators who understand material behavior.
Much of the current discussion around reshoring focuses on infrastructure where factories will be located, what technologies will be installed, and how supply chains will be structured. These are important questions and necessary ones. But they assume something that no longer exists at scale: a workforce that understands how production systems actually function. Factories do not run on software alone. They do not operate on theory. They require people who understand flow, sequencing, material behavior, labor balance, quality control, and the dozens of small decisions that determine whether production works—or fails. That knowledge was once developed in a place we rarely talk about anymore: the factory floor. What Factories Used to Be There was a time when factories were not just places of production. They were places of learning. Engineers, supervisors, and managers did not enter the industry fully formed. They developed through exposure—by working inside active production environments where problems had to be solved in real time. In my own experience, that education did not happen in isolation. While studying production management, I worked in multiple factories across Philadelphia. In one facility, I helped redesign a plant layout. In another, I conducted time-and-motion studies and supported the installation of a tunnel press system. In a third, I worked in production planning and helped define the role of a factory expeditor. These were not academic exercises. They were operational realities. They required understanding not just what needed to be done, but how systems behaved under pressure—when materials didn’t perform as expected, when labor fluctuated, when schedules compressed, when decisions had consequences. That is where production knowledge was built. Not in theory. In motion. What Factories Have Become Today, most remaining domestic factories operate under very different conditions. They are lean, pressured, and optimized for output. There is little room for observation, experimentation, mentorship, and structured learning. Production must move. Orders must ship. Margins are tight. Under these conditions, factories are no longer environments where knowledge is developed. They are environments where production is executed. Efficiently, yes. But there is no built-in mechanism to train the next generation. The Execution Gap No One Wants to Address This creates a problem that sits beneath every reshoring conversation: Even if we build the factories, we do not yet have enough people who know how to run them. We need:• production managers who understand workflow• technical designers who understand manufacturability• industrial engineers who understand time and motion• operators who understand material behavior.
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Instead, we are increasingly producing graduates who are fluent in tools, but have had limited exposure to the environments those tools are meant to support.
At the same time, experienced professionals—those who learned through decades of hands-on work—are retiring.
The result is a widening gap between systems being built and the people capable of operating them.
This Is Not an Educational Problem Alone
It would be easy to place responsibility on academic institutions. That would also be incomplete.
Universities are under pressure to stay current with rapidly evolving technologies, attract students, maintain accreditation, and demonstrate innovation.
Those pressures are real.
But education alone cannot replicate what was once learned in functioning production environments. You cannot simulate the complexity of a working factory entirely within a classroom. You cannot teach judgment without exposure. And you cannot develop production intuition without seeing how systems behave under real conditions.
The Industry’s Responsibility
If the apparel industry is serious about rebuilding domestic manufacturing, then it must accept a parallel responsibility: Factories must once again participate in the development of talent.
This does not mean turning production facilities into classrooms. It means creating structured pathways for knowledge transfer:• meaningful internships embedded in real operations• cooperative education programs tied to production roles• mentorship from experienced professionals• exposure to actual problem-solving environments.
Not observation from a distance. Participation, because production knowledge is not theoretical. It is experiential.
Rebuilding What Was Lost
When factories left, more than jobs disappeared. We lost a system that trained people, transferred knowledge, developed judgment, and connected education to execution.
That system was never formally replaced.
And now, as we attempt to rebuild the industry's physical infrastructure, we are confronted with the absence of the human infrastructure that once supported it.
A Choice Moving Forward
The apparel industry is at a point of decision. It can continue to invest in facilities, technologies, and systems—assuming that capability will follow. Or it can recognize that capability must be built intentionally, through exposure, mentorship, and experience. Because the reality is straightforward: An industry is not rebuilt by facilities alone—it is rebuilt by the people who know how to operate them. If we fail to rebuild that capability, we will not lack for equipment. We will lack understanding. And without that, the systems we are investing in will struggle to deliver on their promises.
This is not about returning to the past. It is about restoring a function the industry once performed well—and now urgently needs again. Because the future of apparel manufacturing will not be determined solely by what we build. It will be determined by who knows how to run it.