Training workers for jobs in robotics

Chicago — Inside a plant at 95th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue sit two massive injection molding machines primed to make compostable plastic utensils. They're also going to make workers.

This is the new home of BSD Industries, a social enterprise that will train individuals in robotics, preparing them for jobs that manufacturers are struggling to fill. As she shows off the $250,000 machines, Trista Bonds, 45, vice president of engineering and manufacturing operations, is clear about what she's building.

"We teach, not a process, but the components that support processes in manufacturing, because then you have the opportunity to work pretty much in any industrial environment and have skills to handle the technology," she says. "We're not making plastics technicians, or welding techs, or food processing techs. We're making automation techs."

For that, JPMorgan Chase has earmarked $500,000 of the $40 million it is donating to Chicago for BSD Industries. In a Sept. 14 op-ed ​ for Business Insider, Chase CEO Jamie Dimon wrote that "Trista inspires me. She reminds me that there is hope for solving our biggest challenges and helping more Americans get on a path to a better life."

That work extends beyond the factory walls. Besides making flatware and making workers, BSD Industries plans to make money. It is structured as a low-profit limited liability company, halfway between a traditional business and nonprofit. BSD's profits on sales to the University of Chicago's hospitals, Hyatt Hotels and other customers will fund the community-building activities of its owner, the Woodlawn-based Arthur M. Brazier Foundation, which since 2012 has supported neighborhood stakeholders to reduce crime, improve schools and boost local business.

The Rev. Byron Brazier chairs the foundation named after his father and pastors the 18,000 congregants at Woodlawn's Apostolic Church of God. He says that in three years, he expects BSD to distribute $250,000 to each of Woodlawn's six schools annually, another $750,000 to the foundation's public safety initiative, to fund an economic development plan and to create an endowment with the remainder. "It creates a cycle of self-sufficiency," he says.

Brazier named BSD. It stands for "building self-determination."

Bonds, an engineer by trade, has about 20 years' experience in electrics, robotics and control systems. She served in the U.S. Army for eight years, attending night classes at community college while stationed in El Paso, Texas. She next studied electrical engineering at Tuskegee University, going to work for Ford after graduation. She came to Chicago in 2004 and worked for Oak Brook sink-maker Elkay Manufacturing.

She joined the Apostolic Church of God because her future husband was a member. She liked the church, she says, because "they did everything a church should do: They fed the homeless, they clothed the naked." Bonds had her own idea for ministry. She admired a training program for machinists run by the Detroit nonprofit Focus: Hope and wanted to establish something similar in Chicago. She wrote a plan for a robotics training program but had no idea how to get it off the ground.

Several years later, Bonds was sitting in the church balcony listening to Brazier tell the congregation he wanted to invest in people, not buildings. The words struck her, she says. "I was just like, 'This is it! I can take this to Dr. Brazier.' "

Brazier, who'd been looking for a way to fund the foundation's community activities, was not surprised when Bonds approached him. "She came to me at the very time I was looking for an answer," he says. "You could say it was divine order."

Connections within the church and Brazier's connections to public officials put the plan in motion. Church deacon James Gilliam was then a community relations manager in Chase's corporate responsibility department; he encouraged the foundation to apply for an initial $50,000 grant, which it received. The congregation matched it with another $50,000. From there, the Chicago Housing Authority contributed with a "multimillion" capital grant to lease the space at 95th and Cottage Grove, as well as three classrooms at the adjacent Chicago State University campus. A $1 million tax-increment financing district was set up in the 8th Ward.

With all that in place, Gilliam suggested Brazier and Bonds go back to Chase. Tell them you've turned $50,000 into millions, he told them. They did, and this time the grant had another zero.

The 13-month training program comprises four stages. Trainees learn to use software to draw blueprints and floor plans, then progress to learning about electric, pneumatic and hydraulic circuits. The final two stages are part of a four-month apprenticeship in the utensil factory; students learn to program the machines, manipulate the robots and troubleshoot difficulties.

The enterprise will train 90 people annually. BSD will employ 30 workers at a time, with apprentices making $12 an hour. Full-time jobs in the field range in pay from $30,000 for an entry-level drafter, to $43,000 for electrical controls support, to $60,000 or more for a robotics technician.

There's demand for these workers, too. Recruiters like Aerotek that supply manufacturers already have contacted Bonds about hiring trainees.

One of those trainees is Tanya Gilmore, 46, of Blue Island. An office coordinator at a physical therapy practice, she wanted to learn something new. She likes to create things, like wigs, crochet apparel and baked goods; she likes the Science Channel show "How It's Made." Watching the plant come together, with production to begin Oct. 12, is exciting, she says. The training allows her to create more