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Training program a ‘dream’ for future Vought workers
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Like the aircraft they will eventually help build, the cutting-edge training of the first generation of Vought Aircraft Industries’ workers in North Charleston was literally designed from the ground up.
When the major players in the workforce recruitment and training effort gathered around a table shortly after the state announced the deal that brought the Vought-Alenia aircraft complex to North Charleston, there was no template for what they were about to do.
“In 23 years of educating students to work in the manufacturing, industrial and construction trades, I’ve never seen this level of technology,” said Tom Iafrate, program manager for Trident Technical College. “The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is the first commercial aircraft to be made entirely of composite materials. While that’s good for us as consumers because the aircraft will be lighter, more fuel efficient and so forth, this really is Star Wars-type technology. It poses a real challenge when you’re trying to teach people how to work with it because even the most basic processes, like drilling, have changed.”
Currently, 24 individuals are training in hope of working at the Vought facility, one of three buildings comprising the $560 million Dreamliner fuselage manufacturing and assembly plant near Charleston International Airport.
Participation in the program, designed by TTC and the South Carolina Technical College System with extensive input from Vought and the South Carolina Employment Security Commission, is no guarantee of a job.
“Final candidate selection will be completely based upon their performance in the program,” said Susan Flessate, Vought’s Charleston-based human resources manager.
But it isn’t just any program.
What excited those who created the coursework is the challenge of matching training and class requirements to the proprietary needs of Vought and the new technology, said Thomas R. Yeoman III, director of special projects and innovation for the Center for Accelerated Technology Training.
“A lot of the early discussion revolved around Vought explaining the aircraft, the materials and what they needed our workforce to be prepared to do,” Yeoman said.
While CATT and TTC were concentrating their efforts on the syllabus, the SCSEC was using the same input from Vought to guide its recruitment efforts.
“From an initial pool of 800 interested applicants, 100 were selected to take a job profile test specially drafted based on Vought’s workforce needs,” said Gary Crossley, Charleston area director for SCSEC.
From that 100, 24 individuals, slightly below the number anticipated, were selected.
“The majority of these individuals are from the local area,” Crossley said. “Many simply want a better job or feel their skills are being underutilized with their current employers. Others have said they want to be on the ground floor of something that is only going to grow.”
Of the first class of 24, the average age of the training program’s participants is 29, and the majority has 13 years of schooling. Many already have some manufacturing experience, Crossley said.
Their coursework, which is being paid for by the state and CATT with an in-kind contribution from TTC, began on
Dec. 10, when each of the students was issued an identification tag and a quality control stamp with which to “sign” all their assignments.
“We’re trying to introduce them to the Vought culture right from the beginning of training,” Yeoman said.
The first phase of training consists of online training assignments in subjects ranging from ergonomics to how to protect oneself from blood-borne pathogens.
For the first month, these and all subsequent students will be expected to take three or four classes a week on different subjects, Iafrate said.
“They can access the courses at any time, so long as they have high speed Internet access, and can work at their own pace, as long as they keep up with the general flow of the course,” he said.
About a month after the online courses start, the students then begin a blended training program augmenting online, at-home studies with hands-on work in the classroom, which was designed to emulate work in the factory as much as possible.
The heart of the 20-week training program, however, deals with the most critical elements of the future plant worker’s life, such as understanding the composite construction material they hope to be working with in the years ahead, as well as relearning tool use, measurement and trim, and drilling to enable them to work with a material that never existed before.
The first training course will conclude on March 16 with a two-hour lecture on continuous process improvement and storm water pollution.
A second training class will begin in April, and by year’s end, when production of the 787 components is expected to begin, Flessate hopes to have at least 60 workers hired for the plant, she said.
For John C. Snowden, vice president of continuing education and economic development at TTC, the creation of the course is more than the fulfillment of a promise to Vought; it is a template for the future.
“Every business in this high tech and highly demanding business environment has proprietary needs that it needs its workforce, its government and its educational institutions to fulfill,” he said. “I see this as a template for what we can offer to all kinds of different companies that might be considering moving here.”
TTC President Mary Thornley said the training program would likely have an additional benefit, or ripple effect, in the local economy.
“As these workers fulfill their goals to secure a better job, other, perhaps underemployed, individuals will take their place at the other companies, and we’ll begin to see a steady growth of employment and career attainment,” she said. “It’s tax money being spent in the finest possible way.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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