Find out more about NTMA Events
Published

Mold Shop Cures the “Curse of Knowledge”

How do you transfer knowledge from skilled employees to apprentices? Here’s how one shop did it using a Facebook-like sharing system.

Share

 
In this Webinar from Cimatron and MoldMaking Technology magazine, mold supplier Industrial Mold & Machine describes how it handled what shop management termed the “curse of knowledge” among its production employees.
 
That curse relates to the difficulty of conveying skilled expertise. In a mold shop, the experts have so much expertise that they forget how much they know. Meanwhile, the apprentices don’t know how much they still have to learn. In between are the employees in their 30s and 40s­—a group that is practically a lost generation in manufacturing, because so few skilled manufacturing employees are in this age range.
 
Industrial Mold & Machine president Wendy Wlosek and information systems manager Larry Housel are in that age range, and they describe the unusual steps they have taken to ensure knowledge transfer from the experts to the apprentices. The shop created a social-media-based knowledge sharing system that is effectively a Facebook for the shop’s jobs. Files and information exported from Cimatron software can be easily viewed and shared within the system via iPads used by shopfloor employees.
 

Learn much more from Ms. Wlosek and Mr. Housel by listening to their presentation here. 

Related Content

  • Top Shop Builds Upon Employee Ownership for Future Success

    In its quest to become the Fox Valley’s best-in-class employer, A to Z Machine has adopted an ESOP, expanded benefits and invested in apprenticeships.

  • DN Solutions Responds to Labor Shortages, Reshoring, the Automotive Industry and More

    At its first in-person DIMF since 2019, DN Solutions showcased a range of new technologies, from automation to machine tools to software. President WJ Kim explains how these products are responses to changes within the company and the manufacturing industry as a whole.    

  • How I Made It: Amy Skrzypczak, CNC Machinist, Westminster Tool

    At just 28 years old, Amy Skrzypczak is already logging her ninth year as a CNC machinist. While during high school Skrzypczak may not have guessed that she’d soon be running an electrical discharge machining (EDM) department, after attending her local community college she found a home among the “misfits” at Westminster Tool. Today, she oversees the company’s wire EDM operations and feels grateful to have avoided more well-worn career paths.

NTMA
Become a NTMA member today!
Gardner Business Media, Inc.
Hurco
Gravotech
DNS Financial Services America
JTEKT
Gardner Business Intelligence
NTMA