Technology for the ages

LTC opens new manufacturing tech center

By: Charlie Mathews, Herald Times Reporter

CLEVELAND — Lakeshore Technical College has opened its Center for Manufacturing Excellence, bringing the newest technology training to students interested in careers in manufacturing.

Located inside the Nierode Trade Industry Building, the center offers several programs including those in hydraulics and pneumatics, motors and drives, programmable logic controls, wind energy technology, dc/ac, robotics, mechanical design and welding.

"This is not the manufacturing of our parents," said Mike Lanser, LTC president at a grand opening of the center last week. "The Center for Manufacturing Excellence is designed to keep pace with employer demand.
The facility has been reconfigured to allow the college to offer new and evolving instruction."
Doug Lindsey, LTC dean of trade and industry, agriculture and apprenticeship, said about 14,000 square feet was remodeled as part of the $864,000 project, aided by a $238,000 federal grant helping to pay for new technology and construction.

Alex King, 22, of Sheboygan and Scott Puksich, 39, of Manitowoc just want to get the kind of hands-on learning and instruction that will help keep them employed for years to come as journeyman welders.

"I'd like to become a journeyman welder and work for a coal power plant or in the railroad industry," said King, a Sheboygan North High School graduate who previously worked on Lake Michigan charter fishing boats.

Puksich had some welding experience at Manitowoc Crane before enrolling at LTC. "It's a challenge, a skilled job not everyone can do," said Puksich, who will get his technical diploma in December.

Lindsey said part of LTC's commitment to give students the opportunity is to "drive the same machinery that you'll see in industry today.

"Robotics coursework is combined with industrial applications to make machines talk and work together, just as they do on the shop floor," Lindsey said.

But will manufacturing jobs be available, especially considering the recessionary economy?

Todd Williams, a member of LTC's machinist program advisory board as well as a machinist at Curt G. Joa Inc. in Sheboygan Falls is confident of the long-term future.

"I'm doing well and our company is doing well," said Williams of the paper converting products manufacturer.

Several executives described the essential partnership between companies and technical colleges.

"There's no reason we can't compete in this world but we need to think, act and manufacture differently," said Mike Potts, executive vice president of Manitowoc's Orion Energy Systems.

Potts said LTC must help develop the talent pool of employees who will create and manufacture technologies not yet in existence or in their infancy.

Mark Rhyan, Sargento Foods' executive vice president and chief operating officer, said highly skilled employees are critical to his company's accelerated production demands.

Fifty years ago, a dozen Sargento workers could package 1,000 pounds of cheese per day. Now, five employees can turn out 4,000 pounds an hour for the Plymouth firm.

For the manufacturing sector to rebound and "for economic development to be successful, we need good technical colleges to help prepare workers," said Ken Stubbe, executive director of the Economic Development Corporation of Manitowoc County.

Some may get help from David Schwobe, an LTC instructor.

"Programmable logic controls are the brains of a machine," he said, in a classroom with multiple training modules for simultaneous learning by about a dozen students.

A new electro-mechanical instructor, Jim Gruenke, said the new center has the flexibility to roll equipment in and out of different classrooms.

Several classes are at capacity, or have waiting lists, especially with the large influx of dislocated workers who have lost jobs in the past year.

Lindsey knows how LTC is ultimately graded.

"The real test of our grads … is whether employers are happy with them and they hire them," Lindsey said.
"And that becomes self-perpetuating in terms of (LTC's) reputation and word of mouth."

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