Nearly two years ago, Northeast Advanced Manufacturing Consortium (NAMC), a training organization focused on “helping people move into fulfilling manufacturing careers,” was looking to develop programs with manufactures in Berkshire County. The agency had funding available to help subsidize apprenticeship programs and approached Berkshire Community College (BCC) to partner with them to create an apprenticeship program. The two became sponsors of the Group Leader/First Line Supervisor Apprenticeship program, which is a first for the college, and the region. Additionally, NAMC suggested that MassMEP had a successful supervisory training curriculum that they had been teaching for several years, which would fulfill the requirements of the Massachusetts Division of Apprentice Standards for the new apprenticeship’s Related Technical Instruction. And, the partnership began.
As behind-the-scenes logistics and planning were taking place, John Neill, who had initiated the project, retired from NAMC and colleague Chuck Coakley stepped in to continue the work along with Chelsea George, from the MassHire Berkshire Career Center. Linda Clairmont, (previously the mayor of Pittsfield) joined Berkshire Community College as Executive Director of Workforce Development and Community Education. Group Leader/First Line Supervisor Registered Apprenticeship became one of the first projects in her new role. Linda’s familiarity with local businesses and enthusiasm about being able to offer an apprenticeship program were incredibly helpful in getting companies and community involved in the training consortium.
Interprint Inc., Cavallero Plastics and Lenco Armored Vehicles selected employees to participate in the year-long training, which was a hybrid of in-person sessions held at the college and virtual classes. MassMEP’s Roger Allen, facilitated the training program through three modules of classes on Leadership Skills, Manufacturing Principles and Problem Solving, a hands on lean manufacturing training and TIPS – Team Involvement Problem Solving, while Ms. Clairmont and her team invited Christina Wynn, BCC’s VP of Administration and Finance, Michael Obasohan and Michael Taylor from the City of Pittsfield, Hari Kumar from Convivo and Michael Wynn from VFOT Training to deliver classes on unconscious bias/DEI, situational leadership, conflict resolution, emotional intelligence/Clifton Strengths, public speaking and presentation skills. The group also received four sessions of workplace safety and OSHA related training provided by Safety Trainers
One hundred and fifty-three hours of RTI training is a requirement of the registered apprenticeship along with two thousand hours of on-the-job training and application at the workplace. These OJT hours and activities were tracked by the companies with the help of Chelsea George and reported to the state each quarter to ensure that the apprenticeship remained in compliance.
The class of five, Kaela Martin and Fred Pittman of Lenco Armored Vehicles, Paul Drosehn of Interprint Inc., and Aaron Simmons and William Nowell of Cavallero Plastics, completed their Related Technical Instruction on May 13, 2025, and celebrated with a graduation event held at BCC. Ellen Kennedy, Berkshire Community College President, welcomed graduates and guests to the event and spoke admiringly about the accomplishments of the apprentices, the commitment by them and their companies and the wonderful partnership formed by the college, NAMC, Mass Hire and MassMEP to bring the apprenticeship program to the Berkshires. The apprentices presented their final projects to the audience of family, managers, mentors, and college staff. They were asked to identify a problem that was impacting them and their business and utilize processes and tools they learned during the year to determine the cause of the problem, then develop corrective action and improvements to resolve issues and bring about positive impacts.
Fred Pittman worked to clean and eliminate clutter (6s) and add visual controls in his company’s painting area. Before you can identify and address problems you need to be able to see them clearly. People could not find what they needed in the area, which was causing longer lead times and delays in completing final products. A simple example of cost savings came from a suggestion to use power tools to sand dry putty before painting rather than doing it by hand. The cost of the sanding process and the time it took was reduced by half resulting in $11,000 annual savings. From one simple change.
Willian and Aaron from Cavallero, tackled communication throughout all departments involved in a manufacturing process and the trickle-down effects poor communication has on on-time delivery, inventory, production, and scheduling. A yellow tag was created and is a living document which is updated throughout all phases of manufacturing allowing anyone involved in the processes steps to know of issues or delays and react accordingly. Training all employees to use the form plays a huge part of potential success which needs to be tracked regularly and sustained. In 2024, waste had resulted in annual opportunity costs of $84,000 for mold setters doing re-runs, $7,700 wasted operation time and $149,049 machine time. Since implementing the yellow tag communication process there have been zero mold resets, no OP time lost, and no re-runs needed to provide on time delivery to the customer. Potential savings of $243,140 yr.
Kaela Maartin worked to optimize the workflow of the parts sorting process in the plasma and press brake areas and parts department by utilizing the 6S process (sort, shine, set-in-order, standardize, sustain and safety) to eliminate or lessen waste from extra handling and excessive processing and motion which reduce value added production time.
Upgrading to a new laser cutting machine will reduce time to cut parts by 13.7 hours per truck produced. They also focused on improving process details to remove unnecessary steps that allowed room for error. Cleaning and organizing work areas and training employees in the changes to process flow and on the new laser machine will improve time and travel distance as well as ensure that parts aren’t lost during production.
Three areas of improvements resulting from this project: Window Pockets- improved process time by over 77% and travel distance by 78% saving 376 feet of worker travel distance. Door Parts- improved process time by over 66% and travel distance by 66% with four hours of worker time saved. Roof Production- improved process time by over 20%, travel distance by over 22% for a cost savings of $600. Key Performance Indicators for this project work- Current state (2024) 247 parts were lost in re-cut. Annual loss (not including materials costs) $49, 717. Future State (January- April 2025) requests for lost parts to be re-cut have reduced by 68%. Square footage, entire production floor 40,000 sq ft. and 234,86 sq ft being wasted which = $25, 741.62. Bucket Process-Current State, involved five “touches per part” or about 45 minutes per truck. 60 hrs. of Non-Value-Added time = $9,300. Future State, now two “touches per part,” 22.5 minutes per truck, a 60% reduction in handling.
Paul Droshen’s project involved the process of providing samples to a particular customer. Current State: take a fork truck and find and retrieve a large “mother roll” of product from the warehouse, unpack it, set the roll up to unwind, take the sample to send to the client, then rewind, repack and return the roll to storage. This practice was consuming and costly, plus, the extra handling of the large roll of product made it easy to scratch or do other damage to the finished product which could end up being sent to the customer. Future State – remove some small rolls from the “mother rolls” during production time to use specifically for samples. This will make the process of sending the samples faster, safer, easier and more cost effective. The sample rolls are marked with identifying information and kept in a special rack which is easily accessible. Calculated savings of about half an hour per sample roll up.
In 2024 the customer received 186 rolls. Forty-two of those had undergone the cumbersome old sample cutting method which happened 23% of the time. Using the small sample rolls means the full process of unpacking and setting up the “mother roll” is not needed which saves about 4 hours per week or 204 hours per year. Samples and rolls of product, get to the customer faster. An SOP is being written and the new process will be taught and used for sampling by all employees. Currently for 2025 the resamples have been reduced from 23% to less than 5% for a cost savings of $1400.
The graduates of Berkshire Community College’s Group Leader/First Line Supervisor Registered Apprenticeship are eager to bring more improvement to their workplace and processes, and to help train others to do the same. The college, NAMC, MassHire and MassMEP are eager to continue their successful work and bring this valuable training to more manufacturing employees.