10,000 Hour Rule, Part 2

​Now let me try to bring home the discussion of the 10,000 Hour Rule and the MSC question of learning to use manual machines.

Out of college I worked for a great man named Pat Benjamin at Allen Benjamin in Tempe, Arizona. We produced taps, gages and reamers using purpose designed grinders. We also had a small area set aside with a manual mill and lathe. Pat was a competitive boat racer and used the shop to make or modify parts for his boat and made it available to all of his employees to use on any personal project.

Think about that. If you own a CNC machine shop, I'll bet a lot of your employees have hobbies. It might be cars, motorcycles, hunting, model airplanes, golf, almost anything. I will also bet most of them have an idea for a new gadget or device for their hobby. What if you were to set up a small manual shop, stocked with remnant material and resharpened (but not usable in production) tools? Let them use it on their own time for whatever they want to do. 

Use focused training, appropriate automation and new technologies (like our's) to get new workers making parts on your state of the art CNC machines now while back filling their basic machining knowledge by appealing to their interests.

"If you build it, they will build"