Stories about high unemployment permeate news reports, so you’d think companies looking for help would have no trouble at all finding people to fill their open positions. Unfortunately, as many companies know, that isn’t necessarily the case. Hypertherm (hypertherm.com), a New Hampshire-based manufacturer of metal cutting products, has grappled with the problem of finding skilled machinists to work in its facilities for years.
Despite consistently being named one of the best places to work in the state and nation and with less than a five percent voluntary turnover rate, the company simply could not find the machining technicians it needed to meet customer demand.
Highly sophisticated machinery is used at Hypertherm to produce consumable parts that comprise the body of Hypertherm’s plasma arc metal cutting torches. These consumables channel plasma, which is several times hotter than the surface of the sun, through the torch and to the work piece being cut. Hypertherm prides itself on making the longest lasting consumables on the market. To do this though, the consumables need to be precision machined to tolerance levels that are eight times narrower than a human hair. To run the machinery to produce these parts requires employees that have strong math and problem solving abilities, skills not easily found.
These consumables channel plasma, which is several times hotter than the surface of the sun, through the torch and to the work piece being cut.
Prior to 2006, most of the training for machining technicians was done on the job, while running production. When the volume of hiring increased, this method of training was no longer sustainable. The problem reached a critical point in 2006. Hypertherm projected it would need to add more than 180 new operators to its workforce during the next three years if it was to have any hope of meeting the needs of the customer. At the time, the company had a total of 120 operators on its team. This meant the company was faced with having to more than double the number of operators in its machine shop, a daunting prospect for any company. But for Hypertherm, which is located in a sparsely populated area of northern New England, the prospect of finding that many operators was not only daunting, it looked virtually impossible.
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