As published in Manufacturing & Construction News - March 1, 2017
Century Die offers “Moldmaker for a Day” training
Century Die, a machining resource and blow mold manufacturer in Fremont, is engaged in training its next generation of employees through the “Moldmaker for a Day” student program.
According to general manager Tim Myers, the “Moldmaker for a Day” program provides area high school students from Fremont City Schools, St. Joseph’s Central Catholic High School, Vanguard Sentinel Career and Technology Center, and other schools in Sandusky County an opportunity to learn about machining.
“We have a relationship with all the local schools and the counselors will communicate with us to set up a day for between 1-3 students at a time, and they basically come over and spend the entire day here,” he said. “They start out at 8:00 in the morning and they go until 2:30 in the afternoon. They go through the entire facility the same way a project comes through the door. They go through project management, engineering, they spend some time with purchasing, they spend a lot of time out on the floor, and in different areas of the floor, and in shipping and receiving, and even the lifted controlling side of things – they spend the day in all those different areas.”
According to Myers, this program has been ongoing for almost six years, mostly on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but possibly any day that students are available. The first year 20-30 students came through the program, last year 123 came through, and so far this school year the company has hosted nearly 90.
“Three of our current employees are honor students that went through our program,” he said. “But of the 123 students we saw last year, from 7th grade to 12th grade, many of them are still in school. So we won’t see them for a few years. Now, we’ve also had students that came last year but they also came the year before because they wanted to do it again. And the best thing to raise awareness out there is these kids are going back and they’re talking, bringing home a t-shirt that has a ‘Moldmaker for a Day’ logo on it, and they wear it to school, and the other kids ask about it, and that promotes our program.
“There’s an apprenticeship program that works through the Technical Career Centers, Vanguard Sentinel, EHOVE, and several other schools,” he continued. “We’re not just limited to this county, there’s quite a few of them. Through those technical career centers we can bring them in their senior year and start working with them, and we do that quite often. We try to start two students during the fall or early winter with the intention that they’ll graduate the academy, and after they finish school they can start and finish on July 1st.”
Myers said that apprentices starting at Century Die go through four years of schooling at Terra State Community College, which is very close in location, as well as four years of training on the floor with mentors. By the time they graduate, apprentices will have 8,000 hours of floor time and 600-700 hours of school credit, all of which is paid for by the company.
While the plant’s current employees describe their tasks to the students, Myers says he has engaged retirees to come in and lead the students, which also gives them an opportunity to talk about their experiences working as a moldmaker.
“The strength of any organization, whether it’s business or for pleasure, can be judged on the participation of the youth,” he said. “If there’s youth involved, it will be strong. If not, there’s nobody to carry on. So with that in mind, I said ‘How do we get the youth involved? How do we get them to see some of this stuff?’ And the other side of that is, along with many manufacturing industries cutting back on the training side a little, this education system has pulled shop classes out of the schools. And, if you watch the media, the media is very focused on getting into college, so they lost sight of better opportunities besides college. Many students won’t know where to go to do things with their hands, as much as they used to when I was in school. The first vision most people have of a machine shop is some greasy, dirty kind of place. It is not like that at all; it is very high-tech and very clean. It’s an exciting career, and it’s very technical.”
Today, Century Die has six apprentices, whereas five years ago there were none.
“Unfortunately, for a great stretch of time, our industry kind of stopped training programs, and didn’t do much of that for quite some time after the introduction of CNC machinery,” said Myers. “During that era in the late-90s, CNC machinery was going to take care of things, and the mentality was you didn’t need to have quite as much skill. A lot of the programs were slowed down or stopped, and there essentially hadn’t been any apprentices for probably close to 10 years.”
Myers has been involved in providing other educational opportunities as well, including the Greenbox Derby. This May will see the 5th annual Greenbox Derby at the Sandusky County Fairgrounds, which is open to any 12-19 year-old interested in building and racing a soapbox car made with recycled materials. The company awards $45,000 of scholarships to a community college for participants in this race.
Myers is also on the Sandusky County Chamber of Commerce Education and Workforce Development taskforce, currently developing a web-based portal to bring together the education system and the businesses that are members of the Chamber. The Bridge, as it is called, provides opportunities for students to forge job shadowing internships, special projects that a company may like to have done, and even entry-level jobs.
“I feel strongly that there’s going to be a lot of opportunities in manufacturing for those that are very prepared,” said Meyers. “With this new government group, I think that we’ll see a lot of opportunities. We’re trying to get prepared primarily with personnel. So we’re working to get the kids exposed, get them in here, get them trained, and they will run the show for us.”
Mold maintenance series
Myers has expanded educational opportunities to include his customers by producing a series of mold maintenance training videos.
The company currently has three videos available from its website: “Replacing Pins and Bushings”, “Replacing Welch Plugs and ‘O’ Rings”, and “Sandblasting a Cavity”.
“A lot of our tools that we’ve built go to these production facilities, and sometimes their technicians will have the need to do some minor repair,” he said. “So, we took out some technical things that could be done at the plant level, for example pins and bushings that are in the mold to guide the mold closed, replacing the plugs in the mold, or adding extension plugs – we call them Welsh plugs – or whatever in the mold that may be leaking or need to be replaced. Most of the cavities have a sandblast finish on it and that is to allow release of air as it fills the bottle, and if that gets worn smooth it will trap air in the mold, so they will need to sandblast the mold. Instead of sending them back to us to do that work, which many do anyhow, but if they have the technicians on staff, they can do that work themselves. We’ve provided these little short videos to explain how to do some of those simple things.”
Company upgrades
According to Myers, Century Die moved into the 5-axis machining world in 2013, and has placed three DMU 50 milling machines since then. The company has also been upgrading its CNC machining centers with two new machines in place now. Two new printing centers have also been placed in the last 3.5 years. In total, the company has invested close to $2 million in new technology.
“Every industry has to focus on customer service, and we’re dedicated to taking care of whatever needs to be done to help the customer get their productions running, or get them through the situation,” he said. “We’re not concerned about who’s at fault or who’s seeing the bill, that all gets sorted out another time. Our primary goal is to make sure the customer doesn’t lose production time, and doesn’t have issues with their customer on the other end. A lot of that is built into our cost structure. We don’t charge a lot for the time to do the simple things. We just take care of it.”
Century Die was awarded the Sandusky Chamber of Commerce Large Business Member of the Year in January.
