Tonytn36
Diamond
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2007
- Location
- Southeastern US
So, as with most manufacturers, we have a hard time getting decent help. There is lots of overtime because we can't get enough help, which leads to more turnover... it's a vicious cycle. Even though our turnover is typically less than 10%/yr, that is still quite a few folks when you consider we employ >1000 at our facility.
When I hired in during the early 90's, you had to have graduated from a machinist school or other technical professional school to even be considered for a position (for production positions). This led to a highly skilled workforce that did great things. Fast forward 10+ years and there are no longer anywhere near enough graduates of technical schools to fill the void due to the change in how the g'vmt viewed education. So you start hiring off the street and weeding out. Occasionally you have one or two who fall through the cracks of the weed out and become long term employees who are not really fit for the job.
I've had the pleasure (pain) of dealing with one or two of those the past week or so. I'm still not sure how I've kept from choking them...but somehow I have managed.
Guy #1 is a decent guy and he's mechanically inclined and can do stuff, but is scatterbrained due damage from a previous career. You have to keep him on task and you have to watch him to make sure he doesn't do something stupid occasionally. But for the most part, he's ok.
Guy #2 just has _no_clue_. I still don't understand how he has remained employed doing this job.
Just this past week and a half, while setting up a newly built production line:
Guy #2 is setting up a machine where we have a pneumatic device with pins on it that extends to align / seat the part in the fixture before it is clamped. He can't get the bolt for one of the pins to tighten up because the hole is full of gunk, but decides that since he can't tighten that one up, he'll just loosen the other one "so they match in looseness". (Note, trying to align a part to hold a 20 micron (0.0008") tolerance.) Then gets huffy when I tell him that won't work and he has to do it correctly. Thinks his way will work fine (he knows it all).
Then spends an hour and a half adjusting on the alignment to get the part aligned... finally comes over and says 'I've moved this adjustment 3 mm and it's still not moved the part at all'. I'm thinking..... hrm.... go over and take a look.... the pin isn't even touching the part because he put one ins that is too short, yet he has spent 1.5 hrs adjusting the fore/aft position of it and has scrapped 15 parts in the mean time. (He never looked to see if it was touching the part.)
2 days later.. We are running trial parts by hand for capability studies. He's running a machine. Calls one of my Mfg Tech's over and asks him why I programmed the machine so that the coolant slowly shuts down during the cycle so that by the time the drill is running it's just barely pissing out of the coolant lines. My Mfg Tech is so taken aback by the stupidity (while watching the coolant die off during the cycle) that he can't even verbally respond to him...... he just goes over and gets a coolant buggy and puts 30 gal of coolant in the (virtually empty) tank, which results in the coolant working the entire cycle now. (Note several thousands of dollars worth of diamond tooling in this machine.)
Last night I get a call, they are running more trial parts. Guy #1 destroys my probe and $500+ custom styli on machine #2 by forgetting to raise up Z axis before returning A axis to vertical while clearing a fault. (And does this by MDI command, not by hitting "home" - which actually would have been better because the machine would have raised Z before anything else happened.)
How do you folks deal with this? I'm not the supervisor, I'm engineering. All I can do is report my personal observations to management. But this incompetence is driving me nuts.
When I hired in during the early 90's, you had to have graduated from a machinist school or other technical professional school to even be considered for a position (for production positions). This led to a highly skilled workforce that did great things. Fast forward 10+ years and there are no longer anywhere near enough graduates of technical schools to fill the void due to the change in how the g'vmt viewed education. So you start hiring off the street and weeding out. Occasionally you have one or two who fall through the cracks of the weed out and become long term employees who are not really fit for the job.
I've had the pleasure (pain) of dealing with one or two of those the past week or so. I'm still not sure how I've kept from choking them...but somehow I have managed.
Guy #1 is a decent guy and he's mechanically inclined and can do stuff, but is scatterbrained due damage from a previous career. You have to keep him on task and you have to watch him to make sure he doesn't do something stupid occasionally. But for the most part, he's ok.
Guy #2 just has _no_clue_. I still don't understand how he has remained employed doing this job.
Just this past week and a half, while setting up a newly built production line:
Guy #2 is setting up a machine where we have a pneumatic device with pins on it that extends to align / seat the part in the fixture before it is clamped. He can't get the bolt for one of the pins to tighten up because the hole is full of gunk, but decides that since he can't tighten that one up, he'll just loosen the other one "so they match in looseness". (Note, trying to align a part to hold a 20 micron (0.0008") tolerance.) Then gets huffy when I tell him that won't work and he has to do it correctly. Thinks his way will work fine (he knows it all).
Then spends an hour and a half adjusting on the alignment to get the part aligned... finally comes over and says 'I've moved this adjustment 3 mm and it's still not moved the part at all'. I'm thinking..... hrm.... go over and take a look.... the pin isn't even touching the part because he put one ins that is too short, yet he has spent 1.5 hrs adjusting the fore/aft position of it and has scrapped 15 parts in the mean time. (He never looked to see if it was touching the part.)
2 days later.. We are running trial parts by hand for capability studies. He's running a machine. Calls one of my Mfg Tech's over and asks him why I programmed the machine so that the coolant slowly shuts down during the cycle so that by the time the drill is running it's just barely pissing out of the coolant lines. My Mfg Tech is so taken aback by the stupidity (while watching the coolant die off during the cycle) that he can't even verbally respond to him...... he just goes over and gets a coolant buggy and puts 30 gal of coolant in the (virtually empty) tank, which results in the coolant working the entire cycle now. (Note several thousands of dollars worth of diamond tooling in this machine.)
Last night I get a call, they are running more trial parts. Guy #1 destroys my probe and $500+ custom styli on machine #2 by forgetting to raise up Z axis before returning A axis to vertical while clearing a fault. (And does this by MDI command, not by hitting "home" - which actually would have been better because the machine would have raised Z before anything else happened.)
How do you folks deal with this? I'm not the supervisor, I'm engineering. All I can do is report my personal observations to management. But this incompetence is driving me nuts.