Frank Ricci never imagined himself as a machine operator at a manufacturing plant. It wasn’t a lifelong dream. But the former computer repairman found himself itching for a career change. When he discovered he could get free training, he decided to try it.
Ricci completed the 80-hour machine operator course in an RV outfitted with computer stations, fabricating machines, measuring tools and an instructor.
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The program was initiated by the Maine Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), which obtained a $1.5 million U.S. Department of Labor grant, said Jack Healy, director of the Massachusetts MEP, which is also involved.
The goal is to train 300 machine operators in the six New England states by June 2007, he said. Each state’s MEP is responsible for recruiting 50 trainees and companies willing to hire the trainees once they complete the course, called MOST, or Machine Operator Skills Training.
The R.I. Manufacturing Extension Services found its first class of about 10 trainees through netWORKri, said Lewis Arnold, vice president of sales and marketing at RIMES. The 30- to 60-year-old trainees come from diverse backgrounds – from truck driving to other manufacturing jobs.
Erlinda Roberts said she was laid off from her manufacturing job of 13 years when her employer decided to move production facilities overseas. She had been doing quality control. The machine operator training appealed to her, she said, because it was a new skill – something she could add to her résumé.
And apparently it’s a much-needed skill. According to industry estimates, there is a shortage of more than 35,000 skilled machinists in the United States, Arnold said.
“It starts with the school systems,” said Joseph Cannon Jr., president of CAS America, a wood cabinetry manufacturer based in East Greenwich. “People are not pushed toward careers in manufacturing.”
Cannon said it could be because of a lack of interest based on the perception that U.S. manufacturing is dead or dying, or because of the “sweatshop” work of olden days. Many people don’t realize the way technology has transformed the profession, he said.
Trainees in the machine operator course learn how to read blueprints for products created by engineers, said instructor Charles Lincicum. They translate the blueprint and enter it into a computer program that provides the commands used to operate the machine that makes the end product.
Lincicum said the training provides a “good understanding of the whole process” – from the design of a product to the creation of a product. Trainees complete small projects such as creating the programming that instructs a machine how to make a chess pawn out of metal.
It is basic training, Healy said. “The big thing the companies have to understand and accept is the responsibility to finish the training.”
RIMES found six companies, including Blackhawk Machine Products in Smithfield, Guill Tool and Engineering in West Warwick, VIBCO in Wyoming, and CAS America to hire the trainees. Arnold said the companies will provide additional training for 60 days. In exchange for agreeing to hire the trainees, RIMES will provide three days of free lean manufacturing training.
“People think manufacturing’s going away, and it’s not,” said Cannon, who plans to hire two of the trainees. “There are jobs and they are good-paying jobs.”
(Manufacturing provides an average annual salary of about $40,000, according to the R.I. Department of Labor and Training.)
Trainees get the rare opportunity to learn not only about operating industrial machinery, but also about the wages they can expect to earn and potential career paths in manufacturing that could take them into engineering and computer programming, Lincicum said.
“This is more of a start than it is a finish,” he said.
