FLORA — Paul Shank remembers a time when his father would sit him down and show him how a particular part would work.
“When my dad brought me in there and showed me how they did it, that turned me on to it,” said the tool room supervisor at Quality Die Set in Flora. “You learn something new every day.”
The company announced Tuesday it would be hiring five more mechanically minded workers like Shank and a sixth employee who would specialize in sales.
The company, alongside the Carroll County Economic Development Corp. and the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce, said much of the new business is because it would be filling additional orders for Wheeling, Ill.-based Keats Manufacturing Company, which makes small metal stampings, custom wire forms and assemblies, according to a news release.
Quality Die Set specializes in custom metal fabricating, machining, tooling and stamping and employs 25 people. It recently acquired
$200,000 in new equipment, including three new punch presses, two riveting machines and a custom machine. Among the Cass County companies Quality Die Set works with are A Raymond Tinnerman, Valley Tool Stamping, Tyson Foods, Logan Stampings and Small Parts.
Raymond Shank, president of the company, said it might be a challenge to fill the positions, which will pay more than $16 an hour depending on experience, because of the skill set employees in the tool industry must have.
“People have been pushed so hard to get a college degree, and being a skilled craftsman doesn’t have the appeal that it used to,” he said. “To actually have a skilled trade is not as sought after.”
That’s part of the reason Quality Die Set was awarded a $5,000 grant last summer for on-the-job training, said Laura Walls, executive director of the Carroll County Economic Development Corp.
“It’s one of those kind of trades that if you’re good, everybody knows who you are,” Walls said. “He needs those who are mechanically minded and assembly minded. If he can find the people that meet those qualities, then he can train them on the job.”
The key to that on-the-job training is being surrounded by veteran tool workers like Shank, who has had to make machine parts, die set, do some programming, design dies, design parts and many more skills he learned from veteran tool makers, including his father, during his 20-year career.
“They show you secrets of how they do things that you just can’t get out of schooling,” Shank said. “Not a lot of people know about the trade any more. You take industrial arts out of the schools and kids don’t know about this.”
• Jason M. Rodriguez is news editor of the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached at 574-732-5117 or jason.rodriguez@pharostribune.com.
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