Congratulations to our IMTS Challenge Winners!

• Tomasz G.
  Prince Industries Inc. – Carol Stream, IL


• Sam F.
  HTR Machine – St. Louis, MO


• Marvin E.
  Decimal Engineering - Pompano Beach, FL


• Brad P.
  BorgWarner - Auburn Hills, MI


• Mike B.
  Northcentral Technical College - Wausau, WI


• Marty H.
  Kirby Risk Precision Machining- Lafayette, IN

Informal Learning

We recently returned from the ASTD in Washington DC. One of the many popular topics with the presenters and exhibitors was around the idea of Informal Learning. The statistic used was “70 Percent of learning within an organization is informal or social learning.”

I would tend to agree that this statistic would be accurate in manufacturing today. Whether it is time spent debugging a CNC program, discussing a weld, deciding on the best way to fix a machine or discussing an employee issue, all of these events are training events.

If 70 Percent of all training occurring is informal, how do you capture this training? Track the training? Budget for this training? Measure the training? With all of the new and emerging social media like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, how do you keep up with it?

Since social media like this is new to all industries, I doubt that any industry—particularly the manufacturing industry—has an answer as to how to capture informal training and learning that occurs in the workplace. But, it certainly has gotten -ideas flowing at ToolingU. Stay tuned for some exciting new products, sites, and features being added for students, administrators and manufacturing community to address the Informal Learning occurring in manufacturing today.

Chad Schron

VP Operations

IMTS

Phew! IMTS 2008 is over! For those of you who missed the show, there’s simply no way to describe it. The best I can think of is 1.2 million square feet of robots, CNC machines, conveyer belts and salespeople! We were lucky enough to be located at the entrance to the North Hall, which provided the perfect opportunity to demonstrate our product to the entire show. I
got a chance to meet a lot of great people over the course of the week – and managed to get a few laughs when I showed them my personal Tooling U test scores.





I think the picture that best sums up IMTS, though, comes from Chris Pinner’s desk. Chris is one of Tooling U’s dedicated writers – and IMTS’ dedicated snatchers. Let’s face it, we all like free stuff. And as trade shows go, IMTS is a free stuff paradise. Chris? Well, he strives for excellence. I think you can tell from the picture below that he made his way around the entire show.

I suppose it’s a good thing that IMTS is every two years. These companies would go bankrupt if they had to supply Chris with new desk decorations every year. See you in 2010!

Sarah Wering

Marketing Manager