single skin vs. sandwich fiberglass

Knowledge is expensive to an employer. A general knowledge is required, but physical properties, that's the engineering staff's problem. Steel workers or boat welders don't know diddly about their materials. They do know how much penetration they need for a good weld, but that's just knowing their job. If you ask them about tensile modulus, they'll just get the deer in the headlights look.

I know it's a crass view, but it's an accurate one. Given the option of paying for labor, that truly knows what's going on and their job or paying labor to do what you tell them to do, are wholly different economic considerations. Most employers would prefer to get a green kid cheap and train them to do things the way they want, rather then try to un-train an experienced tradesman, so that they might do it the way you'd like, instead of the way they did it some place else or the way they think it should be.

Simply put, you can't let labor make design or engineering decisions, if you expect control over the product.

 

simply put if you make a mistake and no one picks it you who are you going to point the finger at ??

You and i could never work together because i would fire you !!! if thats what you believe you stay where you are i and i will stay where i am . !! how do you ever get people to work with or for you?? man you live in the past !!
If your workers dont know anything about the materials they working with them you will have problems all the time specially in the glassing industry sorry i got to go !!.

 

The ideal employee is one who knows enough to do his assigned work well, but be interested in the supporting processes. A 'mindless serf' costs the company money.

At one stage, in a factory environment I was working for, the manager took six months arguing with the union to allow the mould operator to shut down the injection mould and report a fault when the parts were coming out malformed. It was the unions view that the operator was not paid to think - so if the parts were popping out damaged, he was to finish his shift, and the $15,000 of crap parts would be detected by the quality department.

Even Henry Ford, the genius of the production line said "I will pay the ordinary cleaner above the average wage, because a man interested in his job will save double the money picking up small tools off the floor instead of sweeping them into the rubbish"

 

par i agree with most of what you said--money rules! and i know your post was analgous when it came to the welder--but im a welder--and i know what tensile modulous is--io know about boat stresses...im not an expert and i believe in real world experience over doing theory calcs... so tensile modulous and knowing or not knowing other technical terms does not mean that the empirical experience of the worker bee, cannot be helpful ...as regards to the rest of your post yep--employers do want to indoctrinate younger workers to thier way of doing things--its easier than unlearning older guys...labourers can help in design..make inputs.. the best guys are ones who own boats and use them...

 

I have to agree with PAR. I have hired perhaps 100 techs over my career and I quickly learned that I do not want an "experienced" tech. Way to many old habits I have to reteach. One key to composites is consistency and following directions to the letter. The last thing a company needs is someone tweaking the process because they think they can do better. I encourage improvement and participation but it has to be done through communication and cooperation. If anyone just McGyver's it they are fired.

edit - I should mention I am referring to an entry level position. Someone that has 5+ years of aerospace composites experience knows how to follow drawings and relevant specs and wouldn't dream of deviating from the written instructions. If fact the more senior techs are great to get the newby engineers in line with how to create clear and thorough drawings. Nothing more embarrassing than a tech having to sit on his hands until your drawing is corrected.

 

Red Dwarf has it about right and it's in line with what I've found and what industry is regularly focused on.

From a management point of view, the guys walking around the mold are literally minions, with a replacement being trained in an afternoon if necessary. Employees further up the chain of responsibility, do have some knowledge understandably, but again it's preferred this remains job specific. It would be nice if you could afford a bunch of engineers to layup your hull, but they'd be fighting over how things are done more then tossing 'glass. Employees need to be up to their job tasks, but it's not cost effective to have them over educated.

Tug, are you typical of the welders you have worked with or are you as I suspect well seasoned, likely overly skilled and a bit above the majority of guys you've welded along side of?

 

thanks Par--Im basically an average Joe-- with better than average welding skills and engineering knowedge...
although if needed i could get my tickets--but my back is shot...so i just do periodic work --nothing that needs x-ray tests...
Ive had to teach myself alot of engineering because of my infatuation with crazy ideas like building a sub--im far from being any expert in anything..but maybe as they say a little knowedge is a dangerous thing.
I spend most of my spare time learning everything i can on higher engineering aspects...putting the numbers together is easy--its interpreting the data where i get stuck sometimes---

Par how would you compare Westlawn to Mcnaughton?--i m just finishing up the drafting course.

 

You don't give yourself enough credit me thinks, Tug. Your welding skills might be average, but the stuff you bring along makes you down right dangerous .

WestLawn is the way to go, hands down. There's no comparison.

 

> A 'mindless serf' costs the company money

I don't know - I haven't seen many accountant's saying "get these robots out of here, we need more skilled tradesmen".

 

we need more skilled tradesmen this i totally 100 % agree with and they need to be taught also how to manage a small crew of workers .this is sadly lacking with skills learning !!
Accounts need putting in there place and to stick there nose were they need to be and stop ruling the way busnesses are run !advise yes but thats it !! managers need to get there acts together and learn first hand what there staff really are capable of doing and sell there skills . Seems every one is pulling in differant dirrections and doing what ever they please and the poor workers are there following along behind to pick up the pieces and make the best of a hap hazzard leadership .managers and supervisers are to busy chating to the sexy office staff and not paying enough attention to what they really there for . have worked with some absolute idiot supervisors that know nothing about fibreglassing at all but wer telling there workers what to do . in reality they were costing the company dearly ,again management was to blame . I worked in one factory under two company names , i had my staff the other companu had theres . we are asked to build a hill for a 37 foot davidson yacht the other company had alrady done one and they didnt have time to do another so we got the job . at the end of the build and the boat was litfer into a cradle the boss from the other company came and said we had made a mistake with the number of hours we had produced a hull in half the time . how could we do t in half the time ?? simple we were all exsperianced fbreglass staff . we knew what had to be done and how and just got on and did it !! not messing about , no asking silly questions , now wasted time goin outside for a smoke . all the glass was cut at the same time and staked in order and away we went . that cased a stir amongst the office staff . so then we got another differant boat and the same thing , hours were almost halved what they had quoated . They wanted to swap some of our staff so we did and they didnt speed up but took longer . so who do you point the finger at ??

 

Seems to me what some of you guys are saying is you dont want any one smarter than you are so you want a dummy.

Being over skilled can get you fired!!! You encourage top class education then wont employ because they know too much.

 

The systemization of work requires exact procedure followers more and creative problem solvers less.

 

There should not be problems and certainly not solved by the shop floor workers.

Wheres your middle management?

Office boss + worker= crap work

Office boss + floor boss+ worker = better

 

I second that. As scale increases, you want more standardization, more automation (eg, robots) and less thinking at the hands-on level.

Skilled, intelligent workers who enjoy problem solving are too valuable for such work. Plus they will be bored and unhappy.

 

You are assuming that 'exact procedure' can be exactly defined.

In day to day manufacturing processes, there are a hundred little nuances and problems that cant be 'trained' for - you need intelligence. A lot of car manufacturers use robots, but they haven't been able to do away with the versatility and decision making ability of the human mind for critical parts of the system.

I refer you to the 'union' approach story I quoted earlier.

People aren't either creative or manual personalities only , there are a lot of variations and combinations. No-one employs 'robot' personalities, because , for a start, they cant understand the instructions to start with.

Its a common trait of poor managers to blame 'creative thinking' for mistakes, but then punish 'obvious' mistakes that they didnt allow for in their processes.