Manufacturing Advances
Quick Start creates innovative training for innovative industry
Either we automate, or the jobs go to Mexico,” says Melvin Skipper, looking out over a plant floor where orange and blue machines are whipping around oven-heated auto parts, controlled by an unseen hand.
Skipper is the engineering manager at TI Automotive in Cartersville. His company has long recognized the importance of implementing advanced manufacturing technologies and processes in order to stay competitive in the global marketplace. By the end of the year, TI Automotive plans to have more than 15 robots producing parts for the automotive industry.
“It’s really all about improving efficiency,” he says.
As more manufacturing companies come to rely on advanced manufacturing technologies such as robotics and computer-integrated processes, the need for workforce training in those areas has also increased. At TI Automotive, for example, three engineering experts used to be the only staff members trained to operate the robotic equipment there.
Today, after Quick Start delivered its new program in robotics training, it’s a different story. When equipment goes down, there are no more midnight phone calls to the sleepless experts. Now, personnel already on the floor doing other tasks and who have been cross-trained in robotics by Quick Start are able to monitor the complex systems themselves.
“This training is giving operators and maintenance guys with no robot experience the ability to move or restart that robot, rather than call someone else to come do it,” Skipper says. “That’s what being efficient is about — getting those robots back up as quickly as possible so they’re making you money.”
The Cartersville automotive supplier isn’t alone in its increased reliance on advanced technology — and advanced workforce training — to stay in business. The reality of today’s manufacturing is obvious in the numbers: In 2005, North American manufacturing companies ordered 18,228 robots valued at $1.16 billion, 23 percent more machines than in 2004. At the same time, 23 percent of Georgia manufacturers said it was a challenge finding the right employees with the right skills.
When Quick Start saw that its clients had a need for a new type of training, the development team went to work.
“Several of our client companies were using robots and exploring commercial robotic training,” says David Deane, Quick Start multimedia-based training developer. “The training they found was not local, could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and was more suited to engineers than operators and maintenance personnel.”
Deane and Quick Start advanced manufacturing specialists began developing a robot training module unlike anything on the market. They created a system of simulators that can replicate any company’s robotics application, from painting to welding.
“After discussing with clients, Quick Start project coordinators and researchers, we decided it was more cost-effective and flexible to go with software simulations,” says Vic Desmarais, advanced manufacturing training manager. “With the hardware components we’ve developed as control devices, you can program the virtual robots to operate the way one in an actual work cell would work — in the safety of the classroom.”
The program worked. At the Kathleen, Ga., facility of Frito-Lay, for example, the Quick Start robotics training has reduced the company’s training time by half.
“The on-the-job training we had in place before Quick Start kept the operators off the floor for three weeks, costing between $3,000 and $3,300 in lost time,” says Mitch Bowers, Frito-Lay’s warehouse manager. “Now, trainees are up to speed in just over a week. It’s helped quite a bit from a business standpoint.”
The savings will multiply for Frito-Lay as the company embarks on a 70,000-square-foot expansion, in which much of the space will be filled with new robots and other automated palletizing machinery.
The need for robotics and other advanced manufacturing training is becoming so ubiquitous that Quick Start’s industry-driven Certified Manufacturing Specialist (CMS) program is adopting it as a component of the certification process, alongside such topics as fundamentals of electricity and plant safety.
As with all Quick Start training, at the core of all advanced manufacturing training is the client. In the case of the new robotics courses, clients were integral to the formation of the program, from their initial requests for the training to its final delivery.
“In presenting the concept to clients, we found they wanted to do their own safety training, especially lock-out/tag-out training, so we incorporated that,” says Desmarais.
“No matter what the training, we must first understand what a client’s needs are, then figure out how to put the pieces of the puzzle together to meet those needs.”
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