In this June 24, 2011 article in the Wall Street Journal, the authors write:
"People with sophisticated machine-operating skills often can earn $50,000 to $80,000 a year in factories, but many U.S. manufacturers say they can't find enough young people interested in acquiring those job skills."
They also state the following statistic:
"In the longer term, about 30% of the manufacturing work force is expected to retire over the next 10 to 15 years."
As the following chart shows, manufacturing and machining has become more decidedly productive, requiring fewer workers to produce more parts.
Machine tools have become faster and more powerful with higher accuracy. Cutting tools have new geometries, substrates and thin film coatings to more efficiently cut materials and increase tool wear limits. CAD/CAM systems have feature recognition and automated tool path generation capability. There is a generaton of a potental job force that have been raised with the computer skills to quickly learn how to use these new technologies.
Yet there is still a skilled worker shortage.
A part program arrives on the shop floor and is loaded into a new high tech machining center. The tooling and workholding are assembled for the job. This is where the special skills and empirical knowledge of a veteran machinist become a necessity. The part cannot be made first time right. They never are. He or she must spend hours, days or weeks tweaking the program at the machine's control. Intuitively increasing and decreasing speeds, feeds and depths of cut, changing out tools (perhaps meeting with vendors to test new tools) until the process finally runs acceptably. Then they turn it over to an "operator" and move on to the next job on another machine, but may be frequently called back when problems arise.
A Wikipedia-article entitled "Speeds and Feeds" describes the process this way:
"...machinists can predict with charts and formulas approximately which speed and feed values will work best on a particular job, but cannot know the exact optimal values until running the job. In CNC machining, usually the programmer programs speeds and feedrates that are as maximally tuned as calculations and general guidelines can supply. The operator then fine-tunes the values while running the machine, based on sights, sounds, smells, temperatures, tolerance holding, and tool tip lifespan."
The real shortage may not be in skilled workers, but a shortage in knowledge. When your technology-based process depends on someone's ability to decipher "sights, sounds and smells", you will eventually have a problem. It is not sustainable, whether that key person leaves or retires or just doesn't show up for work a particular day. We described it in another post called "Say it isn't so, Joe". Your shop has invested thousands, perhaps millions, in high technology machine tools, measuring equipment and software. You may have invested more in tooling systems, balancers, presetters, shrink-fitters and automated tool vending machines.
Yet the very last mile, the speeds and feeds at which the parts are actually machined, is left to a highly subjective process that relies on skills that cannot be documented, quickly learned or accurately replicated. You just hope you can find a "Joe".
Just as science and technology has dramatically improved the other areas of your shop (CNC's replaced manual machines and CMM's replaced hand gages) it can also accurately predict the speeds and feeds. This is the science of Machining Dynamics and it can be applied to your shop today and, perhaps, lessen your workforce worries.
The attached presentation is entitled "Filling the Workforce Gap with Technology" from the National Tooling & Machining Association.
