On any given day, workers at Greystone of Lincoln Inc. churn out a half million “safety-critical” components for airbags, car engines and aerospace equipment.
But in a tight labor market, finding qualified employees to do the work isn’t easy, says Andrew Stire, Greystone’s primary operations manager.
When there are job openings, Greystone receives a lot of applications, but few applicants are experienced machinists. It’s a problem faced by many local manufacturers.
Greystone is hoping Wilbert Cante and others like him will be part of the solution.
Cante is one of six students at William M. Davies Jr. Career and Technical High School in Lincoln accepted into Greystone’s Launch Pad Training Program, an initiative designed to transform unskilled people into competent machinists in six weeks while they earn a competitive wage.
The Launch Pad started in January with a set of trainees who have since moved to the role of machinist apprentice.
While Greystone is looking at building a future workforce, the students are looking at this as an opportunity to build on their experience in the classroom – where they work with state-of-the-art equipment such as computer numerical control machines. Unlike in the classroom, they’ll get paid at Greystone and will have a chance at a job offer for full-time work after graduation.
Greystone’s program “is going to launch you into the workforce,” said Cante, a junior at Davies. “Not just in a school shop, but in the actual workforce.”
In addition to hands-on experience, Cante and Melvin Shaw, also a junior at Davies, say they were also attracted to the program for its flexibility around their schoolwork.
“We have an obligation to our schoolwork, and they don’t want us to fall behind on that,” Shaw said.
Stire declined to provide a starting wage for Launch Pad Program participants but called it “a competitive starting wage for somebody with no manufacturing experience.”
Participants are eligible for four raises throughout the program, and after completing the program, they’ll have “a significantly higher wage than what they started at,” he said.
Greystone has also publicized the program at Diman Regional Vocational Tech High School in Fall River, as well as through organizations such as the Community College of Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Dream Center, and Polaris MEP.
Stire expects the training program to make a significant difference in the new, full-time employee performances. On average, new hires with no prior experience take about three months to bring up to speed, he said, requiring the company to spend more time and money on training.
To make the program work for students, Greystone provides flexible hours, including evening and weekend shifts, according to Stire. In perhaps the most important aspect of the program, the company assigns each student their own mentor.
Mentors guide participants through tasks such as running machines, changing tools and performing quality checks on individual parts, Stire said, and the trainees may also learn additional skills through shadowing and observation.
Real-world experience is already part of the curriculum at Davies, with all students rotating between a week of traditional academics and a week of building their chosen technical skills. But the Launch Pad Training Program will take the technical training a step further, said Susan Votto, supervisor of the Center for Advanced Manufacturing at Davies.
While Davies has previously sent students to work with local companies, Votto said, the Greystone program stands out to her as “a true mentoring program.”
“The students are 11th graders right now, so they still need mentoring,” Votto said. When preparing to enter the workforce, “continuously having that mentor to turn to makes an easier transition because in school they have their teachers.”
While Davies offers these programs to students, participation isn’t freely given. Students must meet standards such as good standing in their academic and technical classes, and they need to secure a recommendation from their technical instructors. These requirements have helped Davies build a strong relationship with industry partners, Votto said.
“They know our students, and they know what our expectations are on this end,” she said.
To boost the program’s outcomes, Greystone will also try to align full-time offers with a student’s work preference, Stire says.
“Key throughout this is if someone is really passionate about running a machine, we’ll keep you on that track,” he added.
For Shaw, finding this sense of gratification in the job was an important draw to the industry as a whole.
“You actually go into the shop and create that physical part,” he said of the career path’s appeal. “It’s not like some other jobs or positions where you may be filling out forms. There’s a physical product at the end of the day. That’s really fulfilling.”
Jacquelyn Voghel is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Voghel@PBN.com.
