MTI

From the Editor: May is Military Appreciation Month, and Monday, May 28, 2018, is Memorial Day, on which we are called to remember those who died in active military service. The staff at Heat Treat Today is thankful for those who made that great sacrifice and grateful to be able to honor those who have served. We salute our military heroes past and our veterans with this post about the heat treat industry and military staffing. Heat Treat Today will not publish on Monday, May 28, 2018.

Finding good, qualified workers in today’s labor pool is the critical issue facing any industry.

Special Report: Doug Glenn, Publisher

This is the third and final special report from the triennial mega-meeting hosted by the Metal Treating Institute (MTI) and the Industrial Heating Equipment Association (IHEA) and the pressing question that needs to be answered is: “Where do manufacturers with in-house heat treat departments find good training and troubleshooting resources?”

This three-day event with over 91 heat treat industry supplier companies represented and approximately 200 attendees addresses the “brain drain” topic we reported on in Monday’s special report (click here to read Monday’s post).

Both organizations are offering training courses, both live and web-based, for manufacturers with in-house heat treat. Some of the specific courses are mentioned below. In addition to offering training, both organizations also offer memberships to these same companies.

For membership information, click on the appropriate links below:

• For the Metal Treating Institute, click here.
• For the Industrial Heating Equipment Association, click here.

For training, consider the following:

IHEA Training Opportunities

If you’re looking for comprehensive, face-to-face combustion training, consider attending IHEA’s Combustion Seminar. The next combustion seminar is scheduled for early October and a link to register will be up on the website (www.ihea.org) in the near future. You can also purchase a video recording of a recent Combustion Seminar by clicking here. The cost is $960 (less for IHEA members). The course includes the following (plus more):

• chemistry and efficiency of combustion
• types of industrial burners available and how they are applied for efficient operation
• supply and control of the fuel and air for these systems including piping design and valve selection
• flame safety requirements of combustion systems
• process and ratio controls with exposure to micro-processor equipment
• furnace pressure controls for operation and efficiency improvements
• preheated combustion air and furnace recuperators
• NOX and other emissions: what causes them and how to minimize them
• infrared process heating overview and applications

IHEA also offers an Induction Webinar and a Safety Webinar for training your employees how to safely operate and work around heat treating equipment. The next iteration of these face-to-face seminars are scheduled for early October. Check back to IHEA’s website for exact details.

IHEA also offers a very comprehensive online training course which covers many of the fundamentals of heat treating. More information at https://www.ihea.org/events/event_list.asp.

MTI Training Opportunities

The MTI offers equally good training in its Online Academy (click here for more information). The course offering is broad and very professionally presented. The Online Academy comes at a very affordable price of $1,400-$2,800 per year for up to 10 “seats”.

The Academy for Heat Treaters has both technical and managerial content. With over 175 hours of training, there is a wide array of heat treat topics to help management and line personnel understand the technical aspects of heat treating as well as “think” like a heat treater.

Since its inception, the MTI Academy has held over 25,000 classes all across the world. It satisfies minimum training requirements for Nadcap, ISO, and most other certification bodies.

Within the Academy, students can earn four different certificates:

• Qualified Furnace Operator Program (QFO)
• Heat Treat Technical Specialist (HTTS)
• Heat Treat Specialist Certificate (HTS)
• Heat Treat Management Specialist Certificate (HTMS)

Courses can be purchased individually or through the Academy Annual Corporate Subscription Program which provides unlimited use of all 175+ hours of training for a heat treat plant.

There’s More

The above listing of courses is not all that can be said about the offering from either organization. More can be found at each organization’s website or by contacting me directly with any questions. Click here to send me an email.

With the need for training being real, both of these organizations have well-developed educational and training programs that are worth pursuing.

See the first two Special Reports by Heat Treat Today publisher Doug Glenn here:

“One Fix for Heat Treat Brain Drain”, Monday 4/23/18

“Special Report: MTI & IHEA Combined Meeting Photo Gallery”, Tuesday 4/24/18

A Special Report by Doug Glenn, Publisher

Manufacturers with in-house heat treat would benefit from what’s going on this week in Scottsdale, Arizona. As many of you have expressed, experts are leaving your organizations, and they are not easy to replace.

Heat Treat Today recently had a manufacturer in the mid-Atlantic region call to say, “We need help with stress relieving!” They had nowhere to turn so they called us. This same type of thing is happening time and time again across the country as those with in-house heat treat knowledge retire or move on to other companies.

Where does a manufacturer with in-house heat treat turn for heat treating knowledge?

Besides subscribing to one of Heat Treat Today‘s regular newsletters and visiting the website periodically, in-house heat treaters can tap into the resources that have converged on Scottsdale this week. Starting today at the Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale, North America’s largest gathering of heat treating industry professionals are holding a combined meeting with two of the nation’s most prestigious thermal processing organizations:

• IHEA — The Industrial Heating Equipment Association with roughly 60-some company members is an organization of heating equipment manufacturers.
• MTI — The Metal Treating Institute is a network of over 300 commercial/contract heat treating companies and suppliers.

Both of these organizations have separate semi-annual meetings, but once every 3 years they have a combined mega-meeting that brings in one of the largest gatherings of heat treat intelligence in all of North America. Companies from Canada, Mexico, and the USA are represented. This week’s meeting has drawn over 200 attendees and is full of educational sessions and networking opportunities to keep North America’s heat treat minds fresh and progressive.

Companies with in-house heat treat should consider tapping into one or both of these organizations to help them fill the brain drain that is happening and will continue to happen over the next decade.

Brain drain is a real phenomenon.

Heat Treat Today spoke with one company who estimated that up to 60 percent of the heat treat brains in their organization will retire within the next 10 years. This is not an isolated case. Baby boomers, who make up the vast majority of today’s heat treat industry brain trust, are beginning to retire and there are not enough metallurgists graduating from North American universities to fill the gap. Where are these manufacturers with in-house heat treat going to turn for specific, real-life heat treat help?

Both MTI and IHEA encourage manufacturers with in-house heat treat to join their organizations. This would be a great place to start. Both of these organizations are capable of fielding nearly any heat treat-related questions and if they don’t know the answers, they know people who will know the answers.

Both organizations also provide excellent training programs targeted especially for manufacturers with in-house heat treat.

• IHEA’s combustion, safety, and induction seminars are all highly rated and reasonably priced. For more information on these courses, click here.
• MTI offers a wide spectrum of heat treating courses in their “Heat Treat Academy”. Some are free, some come at a price. Click here for more information on the Heat Treat Academy.

So, here is a challenge. If you are a manufacturer with in-house heat treat, and your company is located near Scottsdale, Arizona, I suggest you send one or more of your top heat treat personnel over to the Talking Stick hotel/resort/casino sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday to join in on the meetings of top heat treat minds. If you’re brave and compulsive enough to take the challenge, please send me an email and I’ll help make the arrangements.

Otherwise, think about joining one or both of these organizations.

Finally, you can always contact Heat Treat Today with any heat treat related problems or questions.

• Qualified Furnace Operator Certificate Program (QFO), including MTI’s ABC’s of Heat Treating for Metallurgical Theory, Quality/Testing, Processes, Materials and Equipment.
• Fire Explosion Prevention and General Plant Safety, including confined space, lockout-tagout, personal protection, endothermic gas, among other fire explosion prevention and general plant safety topics.
• Keys to Effective Supervisory Skills, which covers over 55 learning objectives in 12 key areas, including leadership, team building, and interpersonal challenges.

All programs include instruction and student materials, test and certificates for up to five employees. Participants who sign up for the critical heat treat training programs by December 15, 2017, will receive a 55 percent discount. Click here for more information on the program. Click here to register or email MTI at info@HeatTreat.net.