ILMA Compoundings – October 2019 - 28

"It takes a special person to be in
this industry. Most of us came up
in the school of hard knocks, and
to find a young person willing to
put some blood, sweat and tears
in, we're building employees
for life."
Rob Perkins, president, PennStar Lubricants

"We hope the endgame is that there
is some interest from them to come
back when they graduate," Flegel
said. "Our industry doesn't have a
lot of pre-education or knowledge
to our field. It's not one of the more
attractive industries, so it goes on deaf
ears when kids are in high school. A
program like this allows these young
guys to experience an industry they
didn't even know about and hopefully
want to gravitate toward. They bring
bright ideas to the table."

A Savvy Way to Go

The lubricants industry is facing
somewhat of a numbers game when
it comes to finding new talent, and
it's important that young people learn
about the industry and get excited
about it. That's why offering apprenticeship programs is a great way to
ensure the future of a company.
"The manufacturing processes continue to get more complex; you need
to interact with machines, robots and
computers doing a lot of the work,"
Carrick said. "Training individuals to
successfully operate, program or fix
those machines is complex. You need
to find someone interested in pursuing
a career in your sector, and you do
that by giving them an opportunity to
experience those jobs."
By utilizing an apprenticeship program to engage with and become part

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OCTOBER 2019

| COMPOUNDINGS | ILMA.ORG

of the education process, he notes that
companies in the lubricants industry
can ensure the new employees will
come with a skill set that allows them
to succeed in these jobs.
"They will be learning the theories
and basics in school and then applying
those theories on the job in a realworld setting," Carrick said.
In the lubricants industry, knowledge can be tribal in nature, and
apprenticeships enable this knowledge
to transfer in ways traditional education cannot.
Joe Leistikow, technical manager of
U.S. Lubricants, based in Appleton,
Wisconsin, sees apprenticeships as
being mutually beneficial to both the
employer and employee.
"Outside of the general operational
tasks, the employer benefits from an
established program that enables fresh
ideas into the workplace at a relatively
low-risk employment," he said. "The
apprentice can benefit from role/
task-specific knowledge gain, which
increases the value they can provide
to the industry. This is done at a
relatively low cost to the employee
compared to more traditional education pathways."
Rob Perkins, president of PennStar
Lubricants in Northampton, Pennsylvania, said it's important to the
organization to continue to bring in

young blood, and it has seen several
young people come in as interns or
quasi-apprentices and learn the industry.
"It takes a special person to be in
this industry. Most of us came up
in the school of hard knocks, and to
find a young person willing to put
some blood, sweat and tears in, we're
building employees for life," he said.
"We bring in people and teach them to
operate a forklift, work on machines
that automatically fill five pails or
blend 100,000 gallons a day. You have
to get dirty and understand what this
industry means and what it represents
to those of us who have been doing
this for so long."
One young man who was involved
in the company's program started
working in the warehouse after graduating from college and learned the
enterprise resource planning (ERP)
system so well that he eventually was
promoted. Another person took a
liking to sales and, after a four-month
internship and lots of hard work, was
given a sales position at the company.
"Another example is a young man
who graduated from Miami of Ohio
with a finance degree [and] came to
work for us in our warehouse in Cincinnati. We moved him up here about
14 months ago, and he now works
under our COO and has become
Continued on page 30
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