SCOVILL MANUFACTURING CO.
Waterbury, Conn.
The training room of the Scovill Manufacturing Company started April 1, 1918.
We train beginners on hand screw machines and engine lathes on plain turning. The training for experienced workers is to teach toolsetters with some experience to be experts along special lines and otherwise developed in their work. Also workmen with some general experience in machine room work are taught to run engine lathes. Further developments in general machine room work is to be taken up later.
Our best instructors are picked from those engaged in actual production or from promising pupils in the training school.
Skill, patience and teaching ability are the requirements of the teachers.
The best trainees are those recruited from other lines of work in the factory, especially at this time, and those impelled with the real sense of duty. Requirements: Average strength, intelligence and a desire to learn.
The steady type is preferable to the more brilliant operator who lacks staying qualities. The operators are trained in the class of work they are expected to follow, and this training is valued in proportion as it increases production from the first in the production rooms, and enables the operator to face actual working conditions without hesitancy and without fear of handling the machines.
The total cost of installation for our school to date has been approximately $2,000. With us, the cost of training (being the amount paid operatives above their earnings while in the training room) is approximately as follows:
Engine lathe workers $34 average.
Toolsetters $25 average.
Female screw machine operators $10 average.
The average number of female operators in the school is nine and their average length of time for training is eight days.
The male operators, both engine lathe workers and toolsetters, require from three to six weeks’ training before they are sent out to the production rooms.
For tool room purposes we have not taken up the training of women and have only taken up the training of men along the lines of simple punch turning and straight work. We find that the men we instruct in this line of work are very interested and stick closer to the job than the average apprentice in the tool room.
(Signed) Wm. Colina.
THE RECORDING & COMPUTING MACHINES CO.
Dayton, Ohio
Several years ago we had over 200 toolmakers in our tool room engaged upon high grade jigs, fixtures, gauges, etc. The demand for toolmakers became such that the men were leaving us and it became practically impossible to get an adequate supply of this highly skilled labor.
My engineers, superintendents and myself made a study of the proposition and found that on the work that the tool room was doing it was unnecessary to employ such highly skilled labor on 70 per cent. of the work on the average. We, therefore, differentiated the work into its component elements and made a careful line of cleavage between the highly skilled work which the toolmakers were doing and the work which could be done by ordinary machinists. We then brought in men who were machinists, separating them into several necessary grades. We had sufficient work of a minor character to keep the lower grades busy practically all the time. We, therefore, taught them just how we wanted the work done.
As a result of this differentiation of the elements going to make up tool room work and the shaping of a distinct line of cleavage between the work requiring high skill and that requiring skill of a lesser grade, we were able to reduce our toolmaking force to less than fifty.
I am sure that a close study of the work done in any tool room and a division of the work same as along the lines indicated above will result in a decrease of the number of toolmakers required.
August 7, 1918.
(Signed) C. U. Carpenter.