Hand tools before machine tools

Playing musical scales is pretty boring. So is learning how to dribble, running laps, and learning to catch a football.

We all want to go from nothing to slam dunks in a day, to paint a masterpiece on the first try, or shoot 10 under par on the first trip to a golf course. Yet we know that’s not going to happen.

I wonder though, if we’re expecting a similar level of performance in the manufacturing world. With skilled, veteran employees retiring, companies are looking for ways to fill critical gaps, and officials from several of them have told me that they’re hoping that community colleges, technical schools, and other institutions will provide graduates with the CNC programming skills needed.

Could we be skipping a critical step? Should we be teaching new manufacturing people how to work with their hands, not state-of-the-art machines?

On March 27, The Wall Street Journal had a profile of Mitsuru Kawai, Toyota Motor Corp.’s senior managing officer. Kawai, now 67, started his career on the shop floor in Japan at the age of 15. During his 52-year career, he’s watched his employer go from inefficient manual processes to originating the Toyota Production System, the most imitated lean manufacturing structure in the world.

His biggest concern? Young people joining engineering teams at Toyota in Japan understand virtual design and some manufacturing concepts, but they’ve never felt metal vibrate under a drill or experienced the sound of a metal saw.

“When you make something with your own hands, all the steps get ingrained into your head,” Kawai tells the WSJ. German and Swiss companies know this.

When visiting manufacturers in Europe, companies invariably want to show off their apprentice programs. In most of those, students use old, outdated equipment to make the workpieces they’ve designed on old, outdated computers. This isn’t a cost-saving technique. It’s a strategy to make sure that the next generation’s manufacturing engineers understand the fundamentals of fabrication and machining.

People who have learned how to use imperfect tools often find creative ways of working around limitations. Anyone who’s used the side or a rotating hand drill bit to smooth out the sides of a rough wood cut knows that if you’re careful, you can usually get the tool you have to do the job you need. For shops hoping to avoid buying single-purpose machines, that’s a skill worth having.

None of this is to say that schools shouldn’t be teaching CNC programming and how to run a multispindle machine. Those are in-demand skills that aren’t going away any time soon. But can we supplement those programs? As Toyota is doing, companies need to find ways to encourage new employees to work with their hands on solid products before they work with their minds in virtual environments.

Do you think recent graduates have the right mix of cutting-edge skills and basic building know-how? Let me know what you think by dropping me a note at rschoenberger@gie.net.