Thursday, November 15, 2018
Triple E Machine, Inc., in Appleton, Wisconsin, was a five-person start-up when Kaukauna High School’s first Youth Apprentice (YA) was hired. Today, the company runs two shifts, and 50 percent of one is made up of Kaukauna Machine Tool YA graduates.
One reason for this success is the willingness of employers like Triple E’s owner Joe Elrick to take a chance and make the investment. Elrick pairs students with a journeyman for the student’s entire junior year. It’s high cost, but by the end of senior year, most students can set up a complex job and hold machine tolerances for high quality finished work.
“Over the years, we’ve established this relationship with the employers,” says Nels Lawrence, Youth Apprenticeship and Co-op Coordinator for Kaukauna High School, Kaukauna, Wisconsin. “I make it a point to sit down with the employers and let them know how our high school machine tool program has prepared the applicant for Youth Apprenticeship.”
Lawrence has been at the job for 23 years and has built an impressive network of employers willing to work with him: AriensCo, Bemis Inc., G&G Machine, Oscar Bolt, and others.
There are now almost 90 machine shops within 20 minutes of the school. This wasn’t always the case. “With the shortage of employees, it’s easier to get kids in the door,” says Lawrence. “But once companies have hired one or two students, they go, ‘Why wasn’t I doing this years ago?’”
It also helps that Kaukauna graduates are now in hiring positions themselves. When he started in the program as a student, Nick Rieth swept floors, did metal grinding and sawing at Team Industries in Kaukauna, a nationwide maker of tanks and piping. He got a five-year apprenticeship after graduating and, 19 years later, is Team’s manufacturing superintendent with four students at the company.
“They’re great,” says Rieth. “They want to learn; they want to work.”