The wood-furniture sector records more than positive results (in 2021 it exceeded the pre-Covid turnover values) and the export of Made in Italy continues to grow. However FederlegnoArredo reveals that 15 thousand professionals are missing to keep up with the surge in demand, especially skilled workers and skilled craftsmen in the processing of wood and other materials for furnishings.

Eleven new professional figures

Sales and marketing manager, industrial production manager, purchasing manager, machinery maintenance manager; designer; cabinetmaker / carpenter; machine tool modeler; upholsterer; woodworking machinery manager; furniture assembly worker; workers and workers. These are the eleven professional figures who, within the wood-furniture supply chain, will be most called upon to interpret, thanks to new skills and attitudes, the ecological and digital transition that companies will have to implement.

Precisely to accompany companies in the research and training of figures suitable for the ecological and digital transition, FederlegnoArredo joined, together with other European associations in the sector, the "Sawyer - Impact of the double transition on the wood-furniture industry" project promoted by the Commission EU which analyzed the impacts of the double green and digital transition on the wood-furniture sector at European level.

"The project - comments Angelo Luigi Marchetti, president of Assolegno and delegate for training at FederlegnoArredo - explains in detail how 11 professionals in our sector are called to evolve and it is clear how much environmental and digital skills will be the basis of the workforce of a tomorrow that already knocks on the doors. As a Federation - Marchetti reiterates - we are trying to anticipate the new needs of businesses, so as to also stimulate the training chain to develop courses suited to the challenges underway and projects like this, serve precisely to focus the objectives and tools necessary for their achievement ".
 

From school-work alternation to school-work alliance

As regards the problem of training, this arises on two levels: on the one hand, to adequately train young people and, on the other, to update the skills of those who already work.

For Barbara Minetto, Vice President Assarredo with responsibility for training, "Our sector is suffering from the widespread prejudice that working with wood or producing furniture belongs only to the sphere of craftsmanship and manual work. This is not the case: there are many companies that are extremely innovative and technologically advanced. The fascination of this industry lies precisely in the ability to combine traditional crafts with the use of advanced machinery".

Institutions too must play their part. "It is time to move from what until now we have called school-work alternation to a real school-work alliance - explains Barbara Minetto.

The wood-furniture sector can also count on valid experiences such as the ITS Rosario Messina Foundation in Lentate sul Seveso, the ITS wood-furniture sector in Pesaro and the new Innovation Platform in Friuli Venezia Giulia.

The Sawyer project aims to ensure that theory and practice, training and business are both interpreters of change. The news according to which a strengthening of the higher technical institutes is foreseen in the context of the PNRR, orienting them more and more towards the labor market, goes exactly in this direction, as well as the idea of ​​entrusting their leadership to entrepreneurial figures and issuing tenders for the digital and technological modernization of laboratories.

In the photo: students of the LegnoArredo training center of the ITS Rosario Messina Foundation