On-The-Job Training a Key Tool for Company’s Success
Miles Helman remembers his first day on the job very well.
“When I first came to IndTool, I couldn’t tell you what a machine shop was, whether they repaired washing machines or dryers,” he said. “I had no idea.”
Seven years later, Helman is a successful machinist at IndTool, a Burlington-based machine shop and supplier of precision machined products and parts.
“Through the years, Dave and Danny have invested a lot of money and time and training in me, as well as other people here,” said Helman. “I’ve gotten to the point where I’m comfortable doing most anything.”
Dave is the owner of IndTool, David Phillips.
Danny is the plant manager, Danny O’Neal.
The company prides itself on taking entry-level employees and training them on site.
“We’ll start them in at ground level and work them up as fast or as slow as we need to,” said O’Neal. “That’s been a big story to our success here.”
IndTool works with customers across multiple industries, including other manufacturing companies, medical companies, even the food service industry and videographers.
“We make parts from apparatuses that put the whipped cream cap on top of whipped cream cans to cancer diagnostic components that hold microscope slides for doing cancer diagnostics,” said Phillips.
Most of the company’s customers are located within a 200-mile radius of Burlington.
When a customer has a part that they need to create or replicate, IndTool steps in.
“We’re not afraid to take a challenge,” said O’Neal. “If a new customer or an existing customer comes to us and wants to challenge us and say, ‘Hey, this is our problem, can you help us with this?’ We’re all in. We have got a great group of minds that can jump on something like that.”
NC Chamber President and CEO Gary Salamido was very impressed with that great group of minds when he toured IndTool in February.
“IndTool is doing incredible work that builds the tools that make our innovations work, that goes into the machines that help build things across our state and across our nation,” said Salamido.
The company employs 45 people.
But, in the early days, there were just two.
“It started with just me and a bookkeeper,” said Phillips, who founded IndTool in 1986.
“It’s been a nice, little ride,” he said.
Through the years, technology has changed.
Phillips said that when he first started, everything was produced manually.
Today, most everything is produced through Computer Numerical Control (or CNC), which is the automated control of tools and machines by a computer.
“CNC machinery is better, more repetitive, takes less skill to run as far as making the part, but more skill on the programming and making the machine do what’s necessary to make the part,” said Phillips.
Even with the computers, both Phillips and O’Neal said IndTool would not be successful if it weren’t for its people.
“Through those people that we interview, we find the ones that we feel like we need to work with,” said Phillips.
At one time, IndTool was looking for experienced machinists when hiring.
Over time, the focus shifted less toward the experience and more toward the person’s individual characteristics.
“We said if we’ve got somebody that we can bring in that’s got a great work ethic, a good personality, we can train them,” said O’Neal.
Phillips said the change in the company’s hiring practices started about 20 years ago and IndTool hasn’t looked back.
“We learned that experienced people come with their way of thinking, their way of doing,” said Phillips. “So, we decided after floundering a few times with that to start looking for inexperienced people and training them to do the work and to function to their capability.”
That policy helped create Helman’s career.
“I’ve shadowed under more experienced people in the shop and the company has invested in classes for me at Alamance Community College,” said Helman. “It makes me better at my job. It makes me more confident in everything I’m doing.”
O’Neal said that is what IndTool is all about.
“We have cultivated a family atmosphere here,” he said. “That’s why we have a long tenure of people. We don’t have turnover much at all here. That’s something I’m proud to talk about.”