A system for developing workers' technical skills

Nation's Business, Jan, 1997 by Roberta Maynard

The problem faced by Robert W. DuHadaway was how to find skilled workers in an area where the decline in manufacturing had severely reduced the labor pool. Having shifted from defense work to making components for power-generation turbines, his company, DuHadaway Tool & Die Shop, Inc., in Newark, Del., needed to start producing quality products quickly.

To meet the challenge, DuHadaway met with the staffs of local vocational schools and began bringing in applicants by offering apprenticeships. But getting them to his shop was only half the battle.

To train the young workers, the company's management created the "cell" concept: a cell, or team, made up of skilled machinists and apprentices working together to produce particular products. In each cell, all members learned to operate the machinery required for completing that cell's work.

In time, the cell members learned other sets of skills by working in different cells on different types of equipment.

Because of the expertise developed within each cell, the company was soon producing highly competitive, quality products, and it had a number of new apprentices.

Last spring, DuHadaway was one of 175 companies named as state or regional honorees for 1996 in the Blue Chip Enterprise Initiative program. The program recognizes small firms that have overcome adversity and emerged stronger as a result. It is sponsored by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., widely known as MassMutual - The Blue Chip Company, and by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Nation's Business.