CVI sees apprenticeships as tool for competitiveness

It's not by design, but the workforce of Canon Virginia Inc.'s apprenticeship program at its mold making unit skews a little older than most.

Rather than the young people out of high school usually seen in manufacturing apprenticeship programs, those training at CVI are between 27 and 49 years old. They were all veteran employees at the Japanese firm's large factory in Newport News, Va., before becoming apprentice injection mold builders.

"We don't exclude the external, but what we said we'd always look internal first to see if there's somebody that wanted a promotion or wanted an opportunity to learn a trade," said Rhonda Bunn, senior director of human resources and corporate communications for CVI.

"It just worked out that we've always found internal candidates that were really, really good and really, really interested in the program," Bunn said.

The sprawling factory has a large potential applicant pool, with 1,700 employees. There's only about 60 staff in its mold making unit, with more in a separate injection molding division that producers parts internally for Canon.

The mold making division, which has had eight apprentices, builds injection molds for Canon but also sells to other manufacturing companies.

Bunn said the apprenticeship has given employees a path to improve themselves professionally.

"We have people that may be repairing a camera that decided, 'Hey, I want to learn how to trade, or I may be operating a forklift, but you know, I'd really like to do something different,'" Bunn said. "It's kind of given them an opportunity to really grow and do something different. So far it's worked out really well for us."

Bunn said the apprenticeships have helped the company fill a gap in recruiting for those skilled jobs, since southeastern Virginia is not known as a center for mold making. CVI was having very hard time finding find new mold makers using want ads and other traditional recruitment tools.

"It was really pushed because we just couldn't find folks that wanted to enter the trade and come to our region," Bunn said. "Virginia is not actually known as a hotbed for mold making. You're not in Michigan, you're not in Chicago and you're not in the north."

Canon's program is registered with Virginia's Department of Labor and Industry and is a formal, 8,000-hour program that takes at least four years to complete. It has both classroom work and on-the-job training, said Pam Nuby, CVI's supervisor for workforce development.

Apprentices who graduate receive certification from the National Institute for Metalworking Skills and get a journeyman's card.

Bunn said the company worked closely with the state government to design the program to meet standards because it wanted certifications that employees "could carry with them the rest of their lives."

The company has a total of 25 mold makers and seven designers. Bunn and Nuby said the relative lack of other mold making companies in southeastern Virginia has probably made it easier for the company to retain its apprentices.

While the company is known globally for cameras and electronics, its mold making unit operates like any tool building shop. It has exhibited at the NPE show to build its profile and drum up non-Canon business, and its apprentices have made molds that CVI has exhibited on the show floor.

There are other apprenticeship programs in the region, but Bunn said a lot of those are related to jobs at Newport News Shipbuilding, one of Virginia's largest employers. That facility makes aircraft carriers and submarines for the U.S. Navy.

"We really had to kind of develop our own," Bunn said.

The apprenticeship program is a key part of their effort to stay competitive, she said.

"With kind of our aging demographic in that area, we really needed the apprenticeship program to keep our momentum moving forward," she said. "Canon has been in the mold making industry at this facility for over 10 years now, but it's just been a difficult market entry for us."

While it's overcoming those initial challenges, its tool shop is not large. Bunn joked that people are still sometimes confused by the Canon name in the mold building marketplace.

But she said keeping skilled labor is a key part of how the firm intends to grow in mold making.

"We've been here a while and we've got some really good customers, but I think it's important to have that [apprenticeship] program to really kind of bring those people along in the industry because in order to be able to remain competitive and to enable us to make the tools and meet our customers' needs, we need the people to be able to do that," Bunn said.