Shelby County, Tenn., is the Mississippi Delta’s unofficial capital—785 square miles of pure Southern charm, stretching from the smooth-but-steep fourth Chickasaw Bluff in bustling Memphis to the gently rolling farmland in bucolic Bartlett and Arlington. The rectangular-looking vicinage abuts the original Confederacy, sitting barely a stone’s throw from King Cotton’s dark, fertile motherland. Accordingly, it naturally identifies with Deep South art, history, culture and cuisine.

Blues songs conceived in Mississippi cotton fields, for example, inspired Elvis Presley and countless Beale Street musicians. Moreover, Delta forests helped Memphis rule global hardwood markets at the turn of the 20th century, and the famed Peabody (the South’s “Grand Hotel”) hosted Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jubal Early.

With Memphis as its hub, Shelby County easily is the wealthiest part of the Delta. From the posh neighborhoods of Germantown just east of Memphis to the ramshackle hovels of Catfish Row, however, the province certainly suffers from paradoxes. For starters, it houses the nation’s 41st largest metro area (Memphis)—an urban corridor with 1.3 million residents, 600,000 workers and a $67 billion economic engine (the 46th biggest in 2012), yet growth, productivity, household income and wages lag substantially behind the national average and comparable U.S. regions. Metropolitan Memphis also boasts the highest poverty rate among urbanized areas with more than 1 million residents, and its population has stagnated in the face of limited economic opportunities, according to the Memphis and Shelby County Regional Economic Development Plan, a road map to revamping the metro Memphis economy.

Such limitations may be a matter of perception, though. Shelby County has plenty of opportunities—nearly 14,000 of them—but only for select groups of people. Like countless other U.S. metro centers, Shelby County is experiencing a skills gap, suffering from high unemployment (8.1 percent as of Dec. 31, 2014) while tens of thousands of jobs go unfilled. “If we expect to fill those 14,000 jobs,” Shelby County Mayor Mark H. Luttrell Jr. said, “and frankly if we expect to retain and attract industry, we simply must have a workforce that’s prepared to meet industry hiring needs.”

Those needs have become more healthcare-specific over the last decade as Shelby County built an impressive clump of medical device companies. Data show the county is home to 39 medtech firms, a number surpassed only by the orthopedic dynasty seated 480 miles northeast, in Warsaw, Ind. Amassing such an armada, however, has been challenging in light of the widening skills gap. A 2011 study conducted by the Bartlett Area Chamber of Commerce uncovered two main threats to the medtech industry’s viability in Shelby County: overregulation and the lack of a standard training and recruitment program for skilled workers.

To address those obstacles, Shelby County medtech manufacturers have formed an incorporated not-for-profit organization, the Greater Memphis Medical Device Council (GMMDC). The group is tasked with helping direct government and education policy to create a more productive pipeline of medtech recruitment/training programs that will help foster industry and job growth. “Our mission is to create a successful collaboration among biomedical member companies and identify shared workforce needs,” council members told Orthopedic Design & Technology. “The council will then seek to work in partnership with educational institutions to develop curriculum and career programs that benefit the overall industry.”

A number of industrial readiness training programs currently teach soft skills such as workplace readiness, communication, safety and team building, along with hard skills like reading for information, basic mechanics and applied mathematics. But medical
device manufacturing is quite specialized and highly regulated; companies must use advanced manufacturing, finishing and inspection techniques tailored to specific market needs while fully complying with U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations and quality system requirements. Training for these specific requirements is not commonly taught or typically acquired outside of the industry.

“There are technical schools which offer trade specific programs,” the council noted, “but few that directly address the specialized industry-specific needs of the medical device manufacturing market or that offer apprentice programs in conjunction with local manufacturers. The GMMDC would like to foster development of coursework and credentials for existing or new programs in direct support of the required paths for career advancement within our industry.”

Charter members of the council are Ariste Medical Inc.; Big River Engineering and Manufacturing; Bioventus LLC; Enteroptyx Inc.; InnoVision Inc.; MB Innovations Inc.; the spine division of Medtronic plc; MicroPort Orthopedics; Gyrus ACMI Inc.; Onyx Medical Corporation; Restore Medical Solutions LLC; Smith & Nephew plc; Surface Dynamics LLC; Titan Medical LLC; Wright Medical Technology Inc.; Y&W Technologies; and Zimmer Spine.