We have two shops working night and day offering facilities for the training of unskilled people in certain lines of tool work. These people are taken in totally without experience, and placed under the tutelage of our best mechanics, and trained quickly as specialists. Within a remarkably short time they are capable of producing all sorts of tools used in the production of guns and ammunition, thus relieving the general tool shop of a great volume of work which would otherwise require the services of skilled tool makers. From the forces in these shops we are able to recruit the more advanced men for gauge, jig and fixture work. We consider these shops one of the best examples possible of training upon a productive basis.
Aside from the regular training courses as outlined, there are many instructors throughout the shops whose duty it is to explain the best ways of doing the various tasks to which employees are assigned. It has been our intent throughout, in choosing instructors, to select those who are real teachers, having the necessary patience and human understanding required to successfully do work of this kind.
The regular source through which we train toolmakers is the Apprentice Shop. This shop has an enrollment of 125 boys, who are trained in a three-year course to become expert all-round mechanics.
In addition to this, two of our largest shops, of 250 men each, have during the past year and a half conducted special training courses for green men on the more elementary work of toolmaking. The purpose of these courses is to train men who have had no mechanical experience to the point where they can be used to free more expert men from all routine and simple work. These men are started on a lathe grinder or milling machine. Those men who show special aptitude are taught how to use two or more machines, while the rest are trained to operate only a single type. By means of our special course of instruction it is possible to train new men in a period of a week to four weeks, depending on the man and on the kind of work for which he is being trained. During the last year and a half over 500 men have been trained in this way. Recently 60 men were trained in one month. The best of these are advanced to more difficult work, and some of them even become third class toolmakers.
In addition to this work, we have been training girls since last March to do machine work. These girls have hitherto been sent directly to the Apprentice Shop and there given a week’s training on a lathe or a milling machine on repetition work. After this they were transferred to one of the regular shops where they have done extremely good work.
In addition to the training of expert toolmakers and mechanics for the Tool Department, we are also training mechanics for the Gun and Cartridge Departments. Each of these departments has a school or training department containing representative machines and in these schools men are given a course of instruction lasting from one to two months. This prepares them to go out into the shops and take care of a group of machines, keeping them in repair, supplied with proper tools, and generally in good running order.
Third, since the above was still not sufficient to fill our requirements, it was decided to start a regular training shop in which to train machinists and toolmakers, as well as gauge-makers. These men were to be trained in the use of three or four machines; the lathe, miller, planer, shaper and grinder. They were to do the more simple work on these machines, but still, work that was not repetition. In just three weeks after the plan had been accepted, the space was secured, and the equipment of 30 machines, tools, and everything which goes with a complete shop, including overhead shafting, was installed. Moreover, a complete set of drawings representing 40 typical operations was made and blue-printed, and these will serve as a plan of instruction. On Monday morning, three weeks after the plan was approved, the shop, with a complete personnel of foremen and instructors, began operation. It is planned to turn men out in from three to five weeks.
In all our work the emphasis is on production. Training wherever possible is given on actual production work. This not only makes possible training of a very practical nature, but also helps to lessen the cost of the instruction.
(Signed) L. O. Pethick,
Personnel Superintendent.
