By Evan Jones Thorne, Assistant Editor
A
student at Lorain County Joint Vocational School’s NIMS-accredited
Precision Machine Technology Program in Oberlin, Ohio, programs a CNC
machine.
|
It’s no secret that thousands of
skilled manufacturing jobs go unfilled due to a lack of qualified
applicants. To combat this skills gap, the National Institute for
Metalworking Skills Inc. (NIMS), Fairfax, Va., has spent most of the
last 2 decades since its founding developing an extensive credentialing
program. Also, through accredited training programs across the
country, NIMS has pushed for the widespread adoption of national
industry standards, as well as encouraging schools and manufacturers to
dispel negative public perceptions of the metalworking industry.
NIMS was incorporated in 1995, and since
then has issued more than 50,000 credentials to qualified
machinists—more than 2,000 in 2013 alone, according to NIMS Executive
Director James A. Wall—and those credentials are fast becoming the
industry standard. By Wall’s estimate, of the approximately 1,600
publicly funded machining training programs in the country, more than
half are issuing NIMS credentials, with roughly 20 percent being fully
accredited.
“The U.S. Departments of Labor and Education
are encouraging schools to use national industry standards as a
performance measure,” Wall said, noting the nearly $1.5 billion
disbursed through the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and
Career Training program, put into place by the U.S. Department of Labor
in 2010, have helped give schools discretionary funds to improve their
programs. “We’re seeing a lot of movement [towards accreditation] as
these large federal grants begin to move through,” he said.
The process for a training center to attain accredited status through NIMS isn’t quite the same as in other industries.
“We are a little different than some other
organizations, where you have to be a certified [training] site before
you can credential people,” Wall said. “We are just the opposite. You’ve
got to train some people to pass their credentialing exams to prove you
can [train effectively] before we will accredit your program.”
Once a training center has established a
history of credentialing, the next step is submitting an application to
receive a comprehensive self-study kit. Everything—from making sure the
center’s curricula are aligned with national industry standards to
checking the qualifications of the instructors to completing an overview
of safety, health and welfare measures in the facility—must be
documented, with points given at each step. If the organization
successfully completes its self-study, three NIMS auditors are
dispatched to complete a 2-day inspection.
Lenoir Community College graduate Glen Stalknaker operates a Haas VR-8 5-axis machine.
“We’ll
interview students, talk with the advisory committee and contact
customers, as well as industry members, who have hired graduates of the
program,” Wall said. Based on the results of the evaluation, the team
makes a recommendation to either accredit or not accredit the program,
though typically the recommendation is to provisionally accredit the
program pending successful completion of action items.
Lenoir Community College, Kinston, N.C.,
successfully completed its accreditation process on July 29, 2013.
According to Paul Hill, head of Lenoir’s computer-integrated machining
program, it was the logical next step in what he sees as a growing
national trend.
“In the past few years, NIMS has gained a lot
of recognition at the national level,” he said. “At this point, I
really feel like [NIMS accreditation] is going to be the future of the
industry, and most schools that are teaching machining already have a
lot of the necessary things in place to achieve that.”
Lenoir has also realized other benefits
associated with running an accredited program. The credentialing
examination requires an investment, but students receiving financial aid
through Pell grants or the federal Workforce Investment Act can receive
additional aid that offsets the cost of their certification. That’s
important because Hill and his team are always looking to remove as many
financial obstacles as possible for their students. However, money is
not the only issue facing machinist training programs.
“You’re dealing with a generation of kids
whose parents and grandparents worked in manufacturing,” Hill said.
“When companies moved operations offshore in the late ’80s and ’90s, a
lot of people [were fired from places they] had been working at for 20
years or more. That doesn’t leave people with a very good view of
machining. A lot of those parents are pushing their kids toward 4-year
college degrees.” But, he said, skilled and certified machinists can
make more money initially than many graduates with 4-year degrees.
Money and Misconceptions
Changing the perception of machining will
take time and money, according to Jimmy Hall, a career machinist with
more than 2 decades of experience. After spending time in the automotive
industry, Hall enrolled in CNC classes at Lenoir Community College and
received his NIMS credentials in safety and materials in 2012. After
Hall completed his exam, Lenoir hired him as a CNC machine instructor,
where he has been teaching students about today’s manufacturing
environment.
“With the introduction of CNC machining and
CAD/CAM, there are ‘suit-and-tie’ positions in the machining world,”
Hall said. “Most people don’t realize that. I would love to see people
get away from the stereotype of the old, greasy, dark shop with
dangerous machines.”
LCC’s mobile industrial training lab is a self-contained instructional classroom for teaching CNC machining skills.
Indeed,
overcoming that stereotype is one of the goals of NIMS accreditation.
If a program doesn’t look good to students, NIMS’s Wall asked, what’s
the appeal?
“Even if a school has some high-tech CNC
equipment, if it’s in the back of the shop and the shop isn’t well
lighted, it’s going to be a detriment to recruiting,” he said. “We
really encourage training centers to look at the physical facility and
update it so it has the look and feel of a modern, high-tech
manufacturing environment. We’re firm believers that what people see is
more important than what you say, so if you say you’ve got an advanced
manufacturing program and people walk in and see a lot of old machines
painted gray under poor lighting … well, it doesn’t look good.”
Lenoir’s Hill takes the appeal of modern
machining a step further in his recruitment program by operating a
mobile training lab that captures the attention of attendees at
machining-relevant events. Current instructor Hall was enticed to enroll
at Lenoir after seeing the lab at one of his son’s motocross races,
which illustrates the goal of connecting machining with prospective
students’ hobbies and interests.
“I’ll talk about motorcycle parts and go-kart
parts, and right now I’ve got a class making aluminum duck calls,” Hill
said. “I have no idea how they’re going to sound, but I’ve got all
these kids coming in every day ready to learn and ready to work.” In
addition, Lenoir offers machinist math and machinist calculations
classes that allow students to learn key concepts in a context that
directly relates to their machining classes.
Machine Builder Adopts NIMS
While the vast majority of NIMS-accredited
programs are at academic institutions, in May 2012, DMG Mori USA,
Hoffman Estates, Ill., became one of the few manufacturing companies in
the U.S. to boast having a NIMS-accredited training center, according to
Rod Jones, senior adviser of business development and national sales
for the machine tool builder.
“We had built a successful corporate training
program, Mori Seiki University, that serves our employees and our
customers well, and we went through unbelievable growth,” Jones said.
“But the bottom line is you don’t really know how good you are until you
take that step of courage and let someone come in and evaluate your
program.”
Through completing the accreditation process,
Mori Seiki University reorganized its documentation process,
reevaluated its courses (including when and how students were tested for
competencies) and addressed safety issues that had gone overlooked.
“When I first announced the accreditation
program, it took the staff and faculty some courage to get behind it,”
Jones said. “It was a long, hard process, but once we got through it,
everybody was extremely motivated and really excited about having that
additional stamp of approval.”
What sets Mori Seiki University’s training
program apart from academic programs is the range of courses offered.
Though its facility is a national testing center where anyone can take
their NIMS credentialing examination, the training offered onsite, as
well as company- and equipment-specific classes, assumes a certain level
of understanding outside the scope of NIMS credentials. For example,
there is no credential for 5-axis programming, but because DMG Mori
builds and utilizes 5-axis machines, courses are offered as part of
their accredited curriculum.
Although students at Mori Seiki University
cannot receive college credit at this time, Jones is working with
community colleges in the area to establish matriculation agreements for
internships and work-study programs.
“I think the reason more companies have not
sought NIMS accreditation at this point is a lack of familiarity,” Jones
said. “I also think a lot of companies look at education as something
that’s an expense rather than an investment.”
National Baseline
As more and more established organizations
seek accreditation for their training programs, the closer the
metalworking industry gets to developing a national baseline for skilled
machinists. The basis of the NIMS accreditation program is convening
groups of industry leaders to develop standards, and those standards and
the associated requirements are updated and reviewed by the American
National Standards Institute (ANSI) every year, according to Wall.
The accreditation process helps ensure a
program is continuously improving and building enrollment, according to
NIMS’s Wall. “We’ve seen an increase in enrollment in the last 18 months
that has been driven by [job losses from] the [Great] Recession and the
realization that manufacturing in the U.S. is alive and well, but
programs still need to work on recruiting.”
Lenoir’s Hill sees the universal and evolving
nature of NIMS as the answer to outdated training models of the past.
The journeyman’s program, he explained, differs from company to company,
depending on a company’s specialty and the available equipment. NIMS
standards reduce or eliminate those differences.
“Once NIMS is recognized on a more national
level, a NIMS graduate’s skills will be recognized no matter where he
goes,” he explained. “NIMS is going to be the tool [the manufacturing
industry] can use to move forward, and there are a lot of people on
board who are really passionate about it. NIMS is the tool that will get
us, in North Carolina and in the industry as a whole, where we need to
be.” CTE
About the Author: Evan Jones Thorne is assistant editor for CTE. He can be reached at (847) 714-0177 or ejonesthorne@jwr.com.Casting a different spotlight on manufacturing
Dave
Pugliese (center) and Rob DePerno (right) instruct Advanced Tool
trainee Dave Carney on a Rollomatic GrindSmart Nano6 CNC tool grinder.
Starbucks will probably be fine, whatever jokes comedians make at
its expense, but the real casualty of Sparks’ bit is the machining
industry. His casual assertion that operating a machine tool is
life-threatening was based on an outdated stereotype so prevalent it has
become tacitly accepted in American culture. But the simple fact that
the stereotype exists isn’t the problem, according to Advanced Tool
President and CEO Sherry DePerno.“The biggest problem is a lack of knowledge, a lack of exposure to what machining has become,” she said. “I don’t think kids know how exciting the industry is. Those stereotypes exist, but there’s nothing to counter them, nothing to tell people that they aren’t accurate, and, as a result, there are still parents who don’t want their kids to go into manufacturing because of this idea they have of being stuck at one machine in a dark, dirty room, day in and day out.”
Advanced Tool, Marcy, N.Y., retooled its training program to combat these misperceptions. Originally, new hires “shadowed” experienced engineers, learning skills through observing and asking questions. However, this approach came at the expense of productivity, and many trainees felt overwhelmed by this approach and left within 6 months.
“There wasn’t a formal training program, and my senior workers were dreading the process of hiring anybody new,” DePerno said. “I had to find a better way, or I was going to go out of business.”
Advanced Tool hired a dedicated trainer who could start with no knowledge of the company’s processes and systematically dissect each step, building a curriculum from the ground up. In this way, DePerno hoped to increase training efficiency as well as consistent part quality.
“I don’t know what the future holds for my company if I can’t find people who want to work here,” she said. “I think [high schools] push students to go for 4-year degrees, and manufacturing is seen as a place where people can go if they don’t know what they want to do with their lives. I don’t want that. I want people who choose this profession, who see this as exciting. I want people who want to use their brain and their hands, who don’t want to sit behind a desk all day.”
— E. Jones Thorne
Contributors
Advanced Tool(315) 768-8502
www.advancedtool.com
DMG Mori USA
(847) 387-1290
www.dmgmori-usa.com
Lenoir Community College
(252) 527-6223
www.lenoircc.edu
National Institute for Metalworking Skills Inc.
(703) 352-4971
www.nims-skills.org
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