A training program for the future of metal manufacturing

A trainer (left) brings an operator through the basics of panel bending.

Ask anyone in metal fabrication about their greatest challenge in this business and the conversation unfailingly falls back to skilled labor. Shop classes have gone extinct. Fewer people have mechanical aptitude. Heck, many are just happy to find someone who can read a tape measure.

Vander-Bend, a 1,000-plus-employee contract fabricator based in San Jose, Calif., with locations on the West Coast, Southeast, and Midwest, was in the same boat as everyone else, and like many manufacturers, it made a push to boost its in-house training. Vander-Bend’s approach, though, sets the company apart. The organization focused not just on what was being trained, but how and where the skills were learned.

“Vander-Bend saw it needed staff trained on its state-of-the-art machinery, and the staff needed to be trained during work hours and per Vander-Bend’s curricular needs.”

That was Matt Howell, Vander-Bend’s training manager. Howell, initially hired as an HR specialist, had no manufacturing experience, but he had worked for more than a decade teaching and in educational assessment. He focused as much on how people learned and developed their skills as what people learned.

“I saw the manufacturing staff was getting the job done,” he said. “I just needed to help standardize the work into an educational system.”

He took this approach in 2017 when developing and launching Vander-Bend’s first training program, focused on CNC machining. Since that initial program, the company has launched training programs dedicated to press brake operation, quality inspection, and, most recently, welding.

As Howell explained, the program got off the ground because all levels of Vander-Bend’s leadership recognized the value of training and how foundational an educated workforce really is to any company—especially in technical fields like machining and metal fabrication. Put simply, without good training, manufacturing has no future.

The Training Model

Vander-Bend classifies employees into three levels of skill. What differentiates one level from another? To illustrate, Howell related each level to how someone might prepare a meal. Level I technicians can, if given a clear recipe, cook a meal. They might not be able to tackle extravagant or exotic dishes, but they can prepare the usual faire without much trouble. “Level II chefs,” Howell said, “are so qualified that you can give them just about any recipe, and they’ll make it taste good. Meanwhile, Levell III people actually create recipes that taste fantastic.”

In a manufacturing context, Level I people are competent technicians. Level II operators are career technicians and process-specific experts. “People would say that Level III operators just have a knack for what they do,” Howell said. “They create work instructions, new processes, and designs. They can create parts, and people look at them and say, ‘Wow, how did they do that?’”

Howell developed educational content by talking with supervisors and department leads to understand what they needed out of their operators, then crafting a program from their input. He also relied on outside resources such as the online training platform ToolingU.

Matt Howell, Vander-Bend’s training manager, was nitially hired as an HR specialist. He had no manufacturing experience, but he had worked for more than a decade teaching and in educational assessment.

Since launching CNC operator (milling and turning) training in 2017, more than 80 people have gone through the program. It became so successful that in September 2021 Vander-Bend hired its first full-time trainer. “Before this, our machinist trainers’ primary job was making parts. Training was secondary. Leaders also wanted [training to develop] talent even more efficiently than a year. I said, ‘If you can give me someone whose primary job is to get the training done, I believe we can shorten the training time from 10 months to four months. Now, since our dedicated trainer came onboard last year, he can work with between four and eight machinists at a time. He can get them from knowing nothing to being a very productive, entry-level machinist in just four months. I knew our dedicated trainer could do it because he was an exceptional trainer in our 12-month program.”

The company launched its second program, dedicated to press brake operation, about two years ago. Like in the machining program, the three levels of press brake operator classifications follow that chef metaphor. A Level I press brake operator can produce conventional, straightforward parts. They know about bend deductions and bend allowances, along with the basics of air forming, like how the radius forms as a percentage of the die opening. They can follow a basic bend sequence as shown on a modern controller. But they’re not expected to form work that pushes the limits of air bending.

Level II brake operators, if given the right instructions, can perform just about any forming job that comes across the shop floor. They can’t necessarily develop programs for every job, especially for the most challenging ones. Level III brake operators can develop programs from scratch and continually improve them over time. They also work with programmers and engineers to develop detailed work instructions so that others can accomplish the same technical feat.

In fact, work instructions play a vital role throughout the organization. After all, if processes aren’t documented, then knowledge becomes trapped in people’s heads. For complex work instructions, engineers, programmers, and other experts at the company craft them.

“When it’s decided we need part-specific work instructions, our team ties the information to who will possibly come across those instructions, and in what context.” People might learn a job by reading work instructions on their own, or they might use it to complement one-on-one instruction, with a supervisor or engineer bringing the operator through step by step. “If work instructions are to be used by a broad cross section of Vander-Bend employees,” Howell said, “they are released as required instructions per our quality and internal processes.”

The Importance of Assessment

Vander-Bend recruited many of its candidates for the training programs within its own workforce. Internal applicants undergo an assessment—which at Vander-Bend has become a science unto itself. The process effectively helps identify engaged employees who show an interest in taking their jobs to the next level. That said, “being engaged” isn’t the same as “being a good guy.” Someone might have a great personality, but climbing careers ladders in manufacturing (or anywhere else, for that matter) shouldn’t be a popularity contest.

The approach stems from Howell’s days in educational assessment, when he learned, as he put it, “the tried-and-true ways for gathering objective data on subjective perception. And when you can objectively evaluate perception, you get closer to the truth, including what a person’s aptitude and abilities really are.”

Those entering Vander-Bend’s training program participate in a brief classroom exercise that helps Howell and the team evaluate four qualities: can follow instructions, has a desire to learn, seeks clarification, and demonstrates understanding.

“When I give them instructions, do they follow them? Do they have a good attitude? Do they ask questions to clarify what I said, or do they repeat what I say using different words to gain a better understanding? I score them during that class, and then Ramondo takes them out to the shop floor, shows them how to use a micrometer, and brings them through some basic blueprint reading. He scores them on the same four categories, and their current supervisor scores them based on their work experience.” He added that each person assigns a numerical value: 2 if they think the person excels, 1 if they’re satisfactory, 0 if they didn’t observe the characteristic, and -1 if there are concerns.

The entire exercise adds a layer of objectivity in what has traditionally been a very subjective process. Before Vander-Bend spends time and money to train someone, Howell said, the company wants to know the chances of that person succeeding. The greater the success rate, the greater the ROI on training.

A bending department trainer (right) brings an operator through a bend sequence as part of Level I training.

About Poaching

It’s a common fear: A fabricator invests time and money on training an employee, who then ends up leaving for another employer. Poaching is sure to continue unabated, especially in the current job market, but as Howell explained, this doesn’t mean training is a risky investment. “In fact, [the current poaching environment] is one of the reasons why I like our training program model.”

The program is structured to give those with aptitude a chance to earn more money and venture down the Vander-Bend career path. According to Howell, such training investment actually makes employees think twice before heading off to what they think are greener pastures.

“There’s always that chance that some will take off for another job and more money, but that’s the cost of doing business. With this training program model, we’re constantly ensuring we have a pool of candidates ready to go on a consistent basis.”

Finding a Better Way

Some of Vander-Bend’s latest training initiatives aren’t job- or career-specific. Instead, they involve individual courses applicable to a variety of job functions, including geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T). “A programmer needs to know GD&T just as much as an estimator does,” Howell said. “They use it in different ways, but they still need to know how to apply it.”

General knowledge of GD&T helps get everyone on the same page about reasonable tolerances, what’s possible, what’s not, and what’s possible but will take additional resources to make happen. Everyone at Vander-Bend might not understand the intricacies of every manufacturing challenge, but if they’ve taken the GD&T course, they’ll understand the basics of manufacturing tolerances, including the fact that reasonable tolerances in sheet metal are vastly different from reasonable tolerances in machining. This raises everyone’s knowledge and, ideally, fosters a more productive, problem-solving workplace. Put another way, good training helps everyone find a better way.

In one sense, “finding a better way” for customers could be considered a cornerstone of Vander-Bend’s business. The fabricator’s knowledge infrastructure, including technical training, ensures everyone has the knowledge and tools they need to contribute.

Process experts help Howell shape Vander-Bend’s training program, communicating best practices to the workforce. Complementing all this, Howell said, is the company’s continuous improvement efforts. Those who have a career focusing on one area—press brake, welding, or anywhere else—build the kind of process knowledge that’s become vital to a fabricator’s success. But because they’re focused on a narrow area, they also might fall into the we-do-it-this-way-because-we’ve-always-done-it-this-way trap.

That’s where continuous improvement comes into play. In fact, Level III operators are expected to know so much that they can question the status quo and, perhaps working with Vander-Bend’s continuous improvement team, find a better way.

“Shortly after purchasing Vander-Bend, Aterian Investment Partners astutely organized an independent contractor to help standardize Vander-Bend’s best practices and develop a system to sustain them,” Howell said, adding that he modeled the training program on such an effort. “The magic was there. It’s just a matter of organizing and standardizing it.

“I am not the key to success; our team is. I have just fond a role in it,” Howell continued. “Greg Biggs, Vander-Bend’s CEO, often says it’s the staff who have worked at Vander-Bend for 20 and 30 years that make the company what it is. He is correct. The new guys like me know that capturing, documenting, and standardizing this wisdom is the key to success. That’s exactly what the engineers, programmers, and leadership have done. The training program must do the same.”