Working Inside and Outside Your Shop to Fill the Skills Gap: Key Elements of a Shop Training Strategy

Collaboration and personnel development can be used to improve toolmaking operations while helping to fill the skills gap, and Westminster Tool is one such example. Early on in the development of its internal training program, Westminster recognized that 20 percent of the skills that its employees utilize everyday are specific to Westminster. The other 80 percent are necessary for all manufacturing fields. With that in mind Westminster collaborated with other local manufacturers and academia to offset the cost of developing and training employees on general manufacturing practices. The company then focused on creating the resources necessary to develop and train on the other 20 percent of skills specific to the organization. They quickly realized that this approach also needed to include soft skills training, such as communication. Learn how this baseline of soft skills as well as collaboration with local manufacturers and academia has allowed the company to be a technical organization capable of training its next generation of skilled employees.