TURNING SHOP CLASS INTO COMPUTER LAB
That burgeoning need for new manufacturing workers has been met with a mere trickle of new talent. Some blame a shift in educational priorities. One of these is John Winzeler, president of Chicago custom injection molder Winzeler Gear (see July On-Site feature) and a third-generation manufacturing professional. “We screwed it up in the U.S. by turning all these industrial arts classes in the high schools in the 1990s into computer labs,” Winzeler says. “So what we’re suffering through now is what the schools did to us in the 90s. The people that run our organizations today came out of good industrial arts programs. They had the mental capacity to go to college but either didn’t know what they wanted to be when they grew up, or, didn’t have the funding or focus to go, so they started working in a factory and have since gotten their education in short spurts. I can't begin to find that caliber of person today.”
In a bid to locate, or create, qualified workers, many in injection molding have turned to RJG Inc., Traverse City, Mich., which began to offer training courses in the mid 1980s and developed its Master Molder certification in 1999, in addition to its eDart process-monitoring technology. Mike Groleau, project manager, says the head count in the training side of his company’s business has nearly tripled over the last 15 years, with its Master Molder Certification becoming a de facto standard for many shops seeking qualified process technicians.
Groleau also sees the current shortage of workers as being at least partially the result of the U.S. education system, noting how many of his clients struggle to find workers that can think critically. “Critical thinking is probably the hardest part right now,” Groleau says, noting that the spike in standardized testing at schools de-emphasizes these skills. “I think what’s more important is the ability to learn, the ability to think, and the ability to work in a team environment. We’ve heard a lot of feedback that those are real skill sets shops want.”
Francine Petrucci, a second-generation moldmaking professional and president of B A Die Mold, Aurora, Ill., remembers her father, who founded the company in 1968, using shop classes and career fairs as an entrée to recruit potential moldmaking talent. “My dad used to go to the high school he graduated from and discuss mold manufacturing,” Petrucci says, “and he actually recruited a lot of young guys to at least try the apprenticeships. Then when they got rid of all those programs in the school—the machine shop, CAD, drafting—there wasn’t really a good way to get in there and talk to people about it, because they just weren’t pushing it at the schools.”
The article comes from China injection mold manufacturer - Mold Best Assurance Company Limited, website is www.mbamoldanddesign.com
