WINCHESTER REPEATING ARMS COMPANY

New Haven, Conn.

Manifestly, all large employers of labor must train their help to a greater or less degree. It has always been the practice of the Winchester Company to do a great deal of this training, but until the past few years it had all been done in the shops or office where the candidate was to work. For many years it has been the practice to take intelligent boys and young men in the office with the idea of continually promoting them to more responsible positions after they became competent and the positions developed where they might be used. Our graduate apprentices, adjusters and tool setters have been so well trained that they have always been sought for by competitive concerns. Since the war, and especially during the past six or eight months, it has become increasingly necessary to develop the training of employees to the greatest extent. Where formerly help might be obtained who had, at least, some knowledge of machines and shop practice, it is now necessary to take help who have absolutely no knowledge of factory work and teach them to become skilled. In addition, this must be done in the least possible time.

To take care of this condition, we have developed in addition to our regular apprentice course, a training course for administrative and executive positions, an Office School, a Gun Department Adjuster’s Shop, a Cartridge Department Training Shop and Tool Department Training Shop.

The regular apprentice course is designed to give complete training for machinists, gauge makers, tool and fixture makers, etc. The course which ordinarily requires three years to complete has recently been shortened so that some of the boys are graduated in two years. It is the desire to give thorough instruction in the practical work mentioned above. The average enrollment is approximately 90.

The training course for administrative and executive positions is designed to cover briefly such shop and office practice as will give the broadest general knowledge that is likely to be required of those in the more important positions in the administrative organization. This class consists of only about a dozen men who are picked with all possible care.

OFFICE SCHOOL

The Office School under competent instructors consists of a group of clerks who do the complete work of making up pay roll, labor distribution cards, etc., for a number of factory shops which were chosen because of their having respective classes of work. Prospective clerks are taken into this school, trained on pay roll work, transferred to the Central Pay Roll Division as help is needed. In addition to this school for pay roll clerks, model shop offices are being established in each of the major departments where correct methods will be carefully taught. It is our aim to have all shop clerks pass through one of these model shop offices to receive their training, as this will insure standard methods and proper following of procedures. These model shop offices will also act as reservoirs on which to draw to supply vacancies caused by absences among the regular shop office staff.

GUN DEPARTMENT ADJUSTER’S SHOP

The shop for training adjusters for the Gun Department is designed to teach men how to adjust the type of machines to which they are to be assigned for all classes of work which may be run upon them. This training should ordinarily take from two to four weeks, but many times it has seemed desirable to graduate candidates more quickly than this; if they are bright and intelligent it has proven satisfactory to do so. No attempt has been made to train operators in the Gun Department except in the shops where they are to work. Most of this work can be learned in a very few days under the instruction of a well trained adjuster.

CARTRIDGE TRAINING SHOP

The Cartridge Training Shop was designed to train adjusters and tool setters, and some operators. Due to the great number of new employees, it has been impossible to have all tool setters and adjusters pass through this school, but it is hoped that in the near future we may be able to train an increasing percentage of them here. Such men as have received this training have shown beyond doubt that they have been much benefited by it, and that it is most desirable to expand it to include as many of this class of workmen as possible. Some operators have been trained in the Cartridge Training School with excellent results, but most of the work is relatively simple and the training has been satisfactorily done in the shop to which the new employees have been assigned.

TOOL DEPARTMENT TRAINING SHOP

A new Tool Department Training Shop is just being started for the purpose of training operators on lathes, milling machines, planers, grinders, etc. At first we tried to train this kind of help in the Apprentice Shop, but because of the fact that the kind of instruction was so vastly different, it has been decided impractical. In the one case, we wish to give very complete, broad instructions, and in the other, the desire is to train for one kind of work only in the least possible time.

MANUFACTURING TOOL SHOPS

We have two shops working night and day offering facilities for the training of unskilled people in certain lines of tool work. These people are taken in totally without experience, and placed under the tutelage of our best mechanics, and trained quickly as specialists. Within a remarkably short time they are capable of producing all sorts of tools used in the production of guns and ammunition, thus relieving the general tool shop of a great volume of work which would otherwise require the services of skilled tool makers. From the forces in these shops we are able to recruit the more advanced men for gauge, jig and fixture work. We consider these shops one of the best examples possible of training upon a productive basis.

Aside from the regular training courses as outlined, there are many instructors throughout the shops whose duty it is to explain the best ways of doing the various tasks to which employees are assigned. It has been our intent throughout, in choosing instructors, to select those who are real teachers, having the necessary patience and human understanding required to successfully do work of this kind.

The regular source through which we train toolmakers is the Apprentice Shop. This shop has an enrollment of 125 boys, who are trained in a three-year course to become expert all-round mechanics.

In addition to this, two of our largest shops, of 250 men each, have during the past year and a half conducted special training courses for green men on the more elementary work of toolmaking. The purpose of these courses is to train men who have had no mechanical experience to the point where they can be used to free more expert men from all routine and simple work. These men are started on a lathe grinder or milling machine. Those men who show special aptitude are taught how to use two or more machines, while the rest are trained to operate only a single type. By means of our special course of instruction it is possible to train new men in a period of a week to four weeks, depending on the man and on the kind of work for which he is being trained. During the last year and a half over 500 men have been trained in this way. Recently 60 men were trained in one month. The best of these are advanced to more difficult work, and some of them even become third class toolmakers.

In addition to this work, we have been training girls since last March to do machine work. These girls have hitherto been sent directly to the Apprentice Shop and there given a week’s training on a lathe or a milling machine on repetition work. After this they were transferred to one of the regular shops where they have done extremely good work.

In addition to the training of expert toolmakers and mechanics for the Tool Department, we are also training mechanics for the Gun and Cartridge Departments. Each of these departments has a school or training department containing representative machines and in these schools men are given a course of instruction lasting from one to two months. This prepares them to go out into the shops and take care of a group of machines, keeping them in repair, supplied with proper tools, and generally in good running order.

Third, since the above was still not sufficient to fill our requirements, it was decided to start a regular training shop in which to train machinists and toolmakers, as well as gauge-makers. These men were to be trained in the use of three or four machines; the lathe, miller, planer, shaper and grinder. They were to do the more simple work on these machines, but still, work that was not repetition. In just three weeks after the plan had been accepted, the space was secured, and the equipment of 30 machines, tools, and everything which goes with a complete shop, including overhead shafting, was installed. Moreover, a complete set of drawings representing 40 typical operations was made and blue-printed, and these will serve as a plan of instruction. On Monday morning, three weeks after the plan was approved, the shop, with a complete personnel of foremen and instructors, began operation. It is planned to turn men out in from three to five weeks.

In all our work the emphasis is on production. Training wherever possible is given on actual production work. This not only makes possible training of a very practical nature, but also helps to lessen the cost of the instruction.

(Signed) L. O. Pethick, Personnel Superintendent.

NEWLY TRAINED OPERATOR

—TOOL TRAINING SHOP—

GIRL LATHE OPERATOR

—CUTTING TOOL SHOP—