A most curious thing has cropped up during this booming economy. Several times this year I have heard variations on the following: "My bosses have no problem spending money on technology, our company is certainly busy and profitable, but it is the cost of training the employees to properly use that technology that really annoys them." As skilled employees retire or are downsized, who takes up the slack? Surely not the technology. For what is technology without a knowledgeable human mind to properly use it?
As you visit this year's exciting METALFORM'98 exposition in Charlotte, NC, please keep in mind that it is always important to maximize the use of the equipment with proper training. What do you gain by buying a fabulous die protection system that can monitor multiple sensors and control numerous press ancillary functions, if your employees are not trained, and your company never advances beyond die protection with coat hanger wires with that new modern die protection monitor on the press?
I have been told to my face, by some indignant management, "The cost of employee training should be paid for by local governments and/ or the local school systems." (They're referring to two-year colleges, vo-techs, etc.) They believe that training employees on hardware issues should not be part of the investment that a company makes to play the high-tech competitive game.
Have any of you visited your local two-year colleges and vocational schools lately? Just how many state-of-the-art presses, dies, die protection monitors, servo feeders and counterbalance adjusters have you seen during a visit? How can the school systems that are constantly strapped for cash for basic technologies afford to teach modern equipment skills without access to this type of equipment?
Surely no one wishes to have taxes raised to the level where the community schools teach the same level of technology as the local manufacturing base? This may be the way in other countries--but so far, not here in the United States. So what is the alternative to having the government pay for or subsidize training in the schools?
Many manufacturers, once they buy the technologies, sponsor the introductory classes that are offered by the vendors. I strongly recommend this and urge all to emulate their example.
There is nothing like a hands-on class that is taught by the suppliers of a technology. However, unfortunately that is where most metalformers stop in terms of training. Instead of an ongoing, in-house set of skills upgrades--only the original generation of shop floor people who attended that first introductory class are formally trained.
All new employees need to be raised to the skill levels of the existing personnel in their departments, and all employees need to continually upgrade their skills beyond the introductory classes given by the vendors.
Superb seminars offered by PMA and other excellent sources need to be institutionalized for all shop floor personnel that have any responsibility to the hardware of manufacturing. There is no such thing as an employee that is too dumb to learn--if this were true, why have such a person in front of so much investment? Surely no one can argue that smart tooling and assembly machinery does not deserve an equally skilled person to set it up, troubleshoot and run it?
After just a few minutes into a conversation with some management, out comes a litany of managerial headaches whose fundamental source they cannot understand. "Why..., we bought the hardware," they insist, "What more do we need to do? Why are we still smashing dies? Why are we still misadjusting shut heights? Why are we not adjusting our counterbalances? Why are we spending thousands of dollars a week (sometimes a day) on customer returns and production downtime even though we bought all of the hardware? Ah, must be the hardware we bought was no good!"
Wrong! In the vast majority of cases, most companies do buy the proper technologies after visiting an excellent and comprehensive show like METALFORM. What they fail to do is to ask the vendors, in detail, what the operators, setters and tool makers need to master it once the technology is in their shop. They also fail to ask what the role of shop floor supervisors should be in the implementation of new technologies. Just how skilled is the supervisor of the department that will use the new technology? Is he or she on board with this, or will the unskilled lead the untrained?
You cannot simply slap a die protection system onto a press and expect it to use parapsychology and read the status of the die and the parts through ESP. These electronic boxes cannot, by their mere presence on the press, monitor and protect anything--they need to be connected to electronic sensors within the tooling. Likewise with tonnage monitors, whose limits are routinely bypassed by some employees. The safe tonnage is exceeded, the press is damaged and the ultimate is uttered by some in management, "Stupid tonnage meters, they only work if someone sets them up properly".
Some feel that technology should be so easy and thoughtless to use that a complete idiot could run it. And guess what? They actually expect to hire near- or full-fledged idiots to do just that! When the technology rebels and fails to work--the blame is put squarely on the shoulders of the technology.
"Why, I spent $10,000 (or $50,000 or $100,000, etc.) on this box--why does it still need human thought and responsibility to function? Can't the makers of technology come up with something that can eliminate any need for thinking on the part of the shop floor? Just when will we reach the nirvana of high tech with no people?"
Your accounting department most probably does not keep the books with a 286-based computer from the 1980s. Your die designer likewise does not use a slide rule, paper and pencil to design the dies. Both departments probably have state-of-the-art technology and both have people that are fully trained on how to use it.
The books do not balance themselves simply because we have loaded a financial package into a modern computer--the bookkeepers have an intimate knowledge of the proper procedures to use with that software. The die designer is fully versed with his or her latest version of CAD. Why? Because they are urged to attend serious training sessions and/or have spent many hours studying the manuals to fully grasp the potential of the technology and its applications to bookkeeping and die design.
Just how many hours, I ask, have your shop floor employees spent with manuals in a classroom setting learning about the proper way to use the technologies on the shop floor? Have they been formally tested, graded and rewarded for their understanding and application of this knowledge? Is the training ongoing and pursued with enthusiasm?
Have you the right technologies on the shop floor and properly trained people to use them? If not, why not? It's your shop--not the county's, not the state's, not even the federal government's--it's yours. Management needs to allocate the necessary funding for training.
Simply ask yourself the following question, "What does it cost me now not to have properly trained employees." MF
George Keremedjiev, Metalforming Automation & Strategic
Planning Consultant, Tecknow Education Services, Inc.
Mr. Keremedjiev conducts worldwide in-house and regularly scheduled two-day seminars and
consultancies on the modern uses of electronics in the stamping industry covering such
topics as in-die part dimensioning, in-die welding, modern die protection and strategic
management. For information on his services, contact Tecknow Education Services, Inc.,
P.O. Box 6448, Bozeman, MT 59771 or phone 406/587-4751; fax 406/587-9620
Home page: www.mistake-proof-mfg.com Email: Bitenbyte@aol.com