Sweden-based metalworking tools maker Sandvik Coromant has opened a training center in Cypress for manufacturers and students here.
Sandvik Coromant is a subsidiary of Sweden-based Sandvik AB, an engineering group with business in more than 130 countries. The parent company had 50,000 employees and saw revenue of more than $14 billion last year across five divisions.
Sandvik Coromant is part of its parent company’s Machining Solutions division, which had about $4.2 billion in sales and more than $958 million in profit last year. Sandvik Coromant itself employs 8,000 workers worldwide, and serves customers in the metalworking field, which includes the automotive and aerospace industries, the die and mold industry, and various engineering firms.
The training center in Cypress—dubbed the Sandvik Coromant Productivity Center—arrives as the manufacturing industry here and nationwide is seeing a pickup in work and facing a shortage of skilled workers.
Help Wanted
Data and anecdotal evidence indicate that as many as 600,000 manufacturing jobs in the U.S. are unfilled despite the relatively high unemployment rate. The number of job openings in Orange County’s manufacturing sector, which totals about 150,000 workers, is difficult to determine, though recent trends indicate a demand for labor.
The job openings have grown in large part because of increasing amounts of work coming back to the U.S. from overseas, where cost advantages that once drew many companies have shrunk in recent years.
The trend has brought to light a shortage of skilled employees as well as educational programs for manufacturing jobs.
“One of the biggest reasons that the center is here is that we feel there is a lack of resources here as far as application-type of training,” said Robert Page, manager of Sandvik Coromant’s new training center in Cypress.
Page recently relocated from Chicago, where he built and led a similar facility in suburban Schaumberg.
Sandvik Coromant’s first U.S. productivity center was established in Fair Lawn, N.J. in 2003.
The OC location is the third in the U.S. The company has 25 around the world.
OC’s “concentration of business” makes for a good platform for the training facility, said Brian Norris, Sandvik Coromant’s New Jersey-based marketing vice president.
The county’s position in the middle of Southern California was also attractive, along with its proximity to major freeways and to some of the company’s customers.
“[Southern California is] the second-largest metalworking place in the U.S., next to the Midwest,” Norris said. “It’s a big marketplace for manufacturing and cutting tools. It’s active and busy right now. Medical and general engineering are also very big.”
“I’m going to rely on the productivity center heavily even if just to perform test cuts,” said Alan Wax, manufacturing engineer at All Power Manufacturing Co. in Santa Fe Springs.
All Power makes bearings, bushings and various hardware for the aerospace market. The company has about 70 employees in Santa Fe Springs, and about 80 in a facility in Mexico.
“Sandvik’s overall approach to the process is what we pay for,” Wax said. “It’s value added with the tool you’re buying. You get the tool plus their know-how. That’s huge for a metal-cutting brand.”
The company considers the Cypress facility a significant investment in the company’s operations for the southwestern U.S. “There are plenty of folks in that part of the country who cut metal,” Norris said.
“These centers are generally manned with a skeleton crew where we’ll have an administrator, a manager and engineers who will be in charge of machine demos,” Page said. “We’ll staff it with a trainer who will do presentations. We expect to fill the center with customers and attendees.”
6 Machines
The facility has six different types of machines for training in metal-cutting technology, technical seminars, and hands-on machining demonstrations.
Sandvik Coromant will focus on its customer base here. But it’s also open to providing training for “any metal-cutting manufacturer in the area, or even in the U.S.,” Page said.
The 17,051-square-foot facility will open April 3 for an open house, complete with tours, meet-and-greets, presentations and machine demonstrations. The resources are mostly free.
“We’re not charging for what we’re doing there,” Norris said. “It’s teaching, training, advising and giving consulting feedback to our customers.”
Students Welcome
The company counts young students as potential future customers and is planning to welcome them to the center.
“A pretty sizeable part of what will happen in this facility will have to do with partnering with education programs,” Norris said. “To get students interested in the field is the big thing. That way we have a young, talented workforce coming into the field.”
That means going out to local schools and bringing students into the facility.
“As the manager of the facility, I try to get out to the local high schools and technical colleges, and bring them in for an exposure presentation,” Page said. “It’s like a field trip for the high school students to get exposed to manufacturing. Our school system has all but eliminated the industrial arts, and it’s difficult to bring that back for the schools because of budgeting.”
The tours would highlight the realities of the manufacturing industry, which often are different from long-held perceptions.
“People think you’re hand-grinding,” Page said. “That’s not the case anymore. You’re using the highest technology.” n
