Train and Retain

Regardless of the industry being served, effective worker training is critical to a part manufacturer’s success. Horst Engineering’s core focus is producing aerospace and defense parts, but states that precision machined components are just as essential to many high technology industries, including power generation.

Celebrating its 80th anniversary this year, the company employs 115 workers at its more than 9,290-sq.-m (100,000 sq. ft.) East Hartford, Connecticut, facility, which is five years old, and is in the process of hiring 15 more employees, said Scott Livingston, president and CEO. To train new hires, Horst Engineering established its own training program, which is in its early stages and involves in-house studying, classroom work and testing. “We’re calling it a training program as opposed to an apprenticeship program, but it has the same elements. We’re just not filling out the government forms and sort of doing it our own way.”

That way includes working with an expert machining educator to enable new hires to become comfortable operating and making basic adjustments to machining equipment, starting with Swiss-style machines, Livingston noted. “It’s been a success. Then we’re also simultaneously recruiting a trainer for turning because we do as much turning as we do Swiss-type screw machining.”

Livingston added that the plan is to continue with training for milling, grinding, thread rolling and a variety of other processes that the manufacturer performs. “Eventually, we’ll have a whole curriculum for all our major processes. It’s a multiyear plan.”

Regardless of the process, there is a foundation of skills that are required for every employee, he said, principally around the ability to check their own work. Those skills include part inspection techniques, blueprint reading and geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T). Somebody coming from a vo-tech school or community college machining program has some foundational skills that the company can capitalize on, but Horst Engineering can provide the necessary instruction to people with no prior experience who are interested in learning the trade. “They’ve got to want it. The recruiting is really more focused around attitude more so than aptitude.”

Learning to effectively operate production equipment is essential, but developing soft skills and “emotional intelligence” to properly communicate with other members of the organization’s team is also important, according to Livingston. “We’ve used different types of assessment tools in order to help people understand their own personality and behavior traits and to respect, understand and work better with people who have a different set of traits.”