H&H Tube has been serving the tubing industry since 1930, and the supplier of choice for hundreds of companies throughout the world. With declining workforce and aging demographic, they have had to working very hard to create a workplace culture that encourages continuous improvements, individual development, training and rewarding employees for a job well done. To aid in these efforts, they applied for the Going PRO Talent Fund through Michigan Works! Northeast Consortium.
H&H Tube was awarded $20,036 in Going PRO Talent Funding to train 19 existing employees. Training included PLC Training, CNC Training, Lean Manufacturing Training, and Supervisory Training.
H&H Tube was very happy to receive the grant funding, as these trainings will help H&H Tube to create a higher caliber workforce and remain competitive.
Northwestern Michigan College provided the Industrial Controls & PLC Applications Training. The Industrials Controls portion of the course provided an understanding of electrical safety control circuits, electrical schematics, and line diagrams, while the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) portion was designed for those who are not familiar with PLC programming and needed an understanding of working with PLCs.
Chong Mi Kim, General Manager at H&H Tube stated, “Most of the manufacturing equipment at H&H Tube uses PLC (The Programmable Logic Controller), but we only have couple of employees with the skills and training necessary to troubleshoot and monitor the control systems in the factory. The Industrial Controls & PLC Applications course from NWM College is a good foundation for our tooling and maintenance team.”
Chet Latta, Tooling Engineer, agreed, “This PLC training added to the knowledge base my co-workers and I already had. It has already helped us troubleshoot problems quicker and easier than before, adding uptime value to our equipment.”
David Erber found the CNC Training to be very beneficial as well, “The CNC Training, was very helpful, in understanding lathe functions and tooling, better understanding of writing basic code, and how to read what the machine is actually going to do in the program. Tool nomenclature, and tool compensation for tool radius was also easier understood from the class. Plus some tips and tricks to the controls of the machine. Helped make things more effective and efficient in day to day machining operations."
Jon Morris, a recipient of the Lean Training, said, "At the core of the LEAN philosophy is reducing waste. I’ve always strived to be as efficient as possible in all my tasks so having an organized way to do that is right up my alley. I will use the techniques that I have learned at home to streamline some of the “processes” that my family and I do on a regular basis. It will also help at work to make our tasks more efficient. However, making changes to lean out production processes has proven to be difficult in the past as the resistance to change is extremely high. So that resistance to change always has been and will continue be the biggest hurdle to overcome when implementing change at work."
Dan Neal, participant in the Supervisor Training, said, “The best part of supervisor training was trying to learn how to think the way others might hear or learn something so differently than you do or have thought of, most of us have not had training and good on the job examples how to think about this, the exercises to do together to show this made an impact.”
Comments