Pottstown, Pa.
Our production is about half of what it should be, due to lack of
skilled help, in other words, due to lack of machinists. We have not
had much trouble in getting green men and we have had no trouble
in training these green men to do the operations on the shell both
accurately and quickly, but we have had trouble in _getting men to
maintain the tools or to equip for these operators_.
Facing this condition and being unable to obtain machinists, we
decided to train men to do machinists’ and toolmakers’ work.
Our scheme as outlined is as follows: We are taking operators who
have had experience of a year or more in our shop and are putting
them _into the school_ under a good mechanic who fortunately is a
teacher also. After a few weeks in the school we are _putting them
into the tool room as operators_, that is, they will be on work where
they will get work _of a repeating nature_ and they will stay on the
same class of work for a considerable period of time, depending on
the man and how fast our other pupils come on, the idea being then to
take the first man back again to the school and teach him to operate
some other machine tool, then send him back in the tool room, where,
after he has operated on the second type of tool for a certain length
of time, he would then be of more use, as the tool room foreman could
then place him on either one of two machines. For the more attentive
and interested men we would continue this scheme and thus teach them
the operations of all machines and tools used in the tool room. We
have also provided for a certain line of bench training.
Within the next few weeks we hope to be able to take some of our
machine tools from the shell shop and put them into this school and
we will then train our operators in this school with the idea in
mind, as stated in our previous letter, of teaching them the proper
care of a machine tool, as we consider this of vital importance. In
fact, the writer would say that from observation in other plants and
experience here that it is his opinion that one of the greatest, if
not the greatest, causes for lack of production in machine shops
now on shell work is due to _machine breakage_, this coming from
several causes, among the foremost being the lack of knowledge on the
operators’ part.
When the idea of the school was first brought up there was some
feeling among the skilled mechanics that the men trained in the
school would replace them to the detriment of the mechanic, but
this idea has passed or is passing away very rapidly and we find a
considerable interest shown by the mechanics in the things that we
are teaching. Two of our good machinists who are on maintenance or
repair work have asked to be allowed to go to the school so that they
may become better workers and get a training on finer work. Others
have shown similar interest and we have tentatively agreed to start
an evening school this fall for mechanics, our proposal being to
work in conjunction with the Y. M. C. A. for shop drawing and the
reading of drawings and to use our own shop for special instruction
on machine tools.
(Signed) GEORGE C. LEES,
_Secretary and Works Manager_.