cells to increase our high-precision tooling and technical CNC capabilities and production efficiencies.” An underlying driver of this increase in expectations, they
agree, is the fact that most of the simple, lesser-quality work continues to get pushed out overseas.
The Workers
The rising expectations of custom- ers (such as Tandem Diabetes Care— see sidebar) have caused Micro Mold and Plastikos to raise their level of expertise in recent years. “Our techni- cal knowledge base and skill set have really gone through the roof compared to a decade ago when we had, I think, two degreed engineers,” Philip noted. “Investing in our people is the most important thing we’ve done, and that includes recruiting the best techni- cal and engineering resources. That’s something we’ve really ramped up over the last 10 years—the number of degreed engineers as well as other technically trained people who may not all have a formal credential but who can go toe-to-toe with any engi- neer any day. We have Penn State-Erie here in our back yard, which has an excellent plastic engineering program, and just from Penn State alone we now have 12 plastics engineers on our team between Micro Mold and Plas- tikos, and another five engineers—in- cluding a medical engineer, as well as Ryan and I—both Industrial engineers. As we’ve grown and brought on new customers, especially on the medical side, that knowledge, the formal train- ing and education has been critical.” There’s an obvious component of
self-interest when companies become benefactors to schools and training programs that will hopefully bring them more and better employees. But here the mission of bringing STEM educa- tion and knowledge of the manufactur-
January 2015 |
AdvancedManufacturing.org 83
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ing career path means more than just keeping jobs filled. Philip credits partner Rob Cooney as well as brother Ryan for making an impact on education and training inside and outside the companies’ doors. Cooney was one of the first
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