Quote History Originally Posted By JimEb:
How is the skilled operator job market?
Kind of non-existent here. Even a new ‘experienced’ engineer we just hired doesn't seem all that competent.
I’m a Fanuc 6-axis robot guy at a manufacturer, not an integrator. Talking to our normal Fanuc tech support guy who gets out to many facilities there definitely is a lack of competence in skilled labor. He’s got lots of hilarious stories of people unequal to their task in automation.
View Quote
It is kind of non existent. I don’t think a lot of high volume production happens around here. We really have medium to high volume production 200-6000 units per run. Occasionally up around 15,000.
I think a lot of local shops do 50 or less parts often- and that allows dirty processes to work- because you don’t have enough time in the job for people to expect quality parts and stable processes to happen. A lot of the local industry work is first second third operation work in simpler machines where 99% of our turning work is one operation complete parts, so the processes are just vastly superior and more complex. Requiring more skilled people with more attention to detail.
At those numbers we are trying to do manufacturing in a pretty advanced sense- where operators are running twin spindle machines up to twin turret, where tools are tracked in tool life and load monitored.
A lot of area shops teach operators almost nothing to where they are about as qualified to run a cnc machine as a dominoes pizza delivery driver.
At our place we put operator candidates through fanuc course material, we teach them how to read insert wear, we teach them how to do many near settup tasks correctly.
We have had a high number of people who claim to be settup people who once they become familiar with the machines we are operating, admit they are out of their depth, which is to say they mentally quit trying to learn which is unfortunate, because we will take people there if they can continue to be mentally engaged in the process.
For example one of our lathe settup people was a 14 year old auto detailer for a dealership when we hired him, and he is able to settup machines with career professionals, where other shop settup people at times do that mental quitting thing.