Mission Critical Solutions is no stranger when it comes to helping young professionals in our community gain real world experience. For the past several years, MCS has housed the Greater Johnstown Welding School. This is an excellent opportunity for beginners to get acclimated to the manufacturing environment. On top of this being an excellent opportunity for the students; this gives MCS an opportunity to hire young welders after they get certified through the school. Many of the welders gravitate towards MCS after completion since they are so used to working in our shop and with our equipment.

Now, we are proud to announce our partnership with the Greater Johnstown Career and Technology Center Machine Shop. MCS is always looking for ways to grow our footprint within the region and tapping into the younger generation of tradesmen is important for manufacturing facilities in our area.

The Greater Johnstown Career and Technology Center reached out to MCS regarding a long-awaited project. GJCTC machinist school was looking for a company that would be willing to provide production-level machine parts for their students to work on. According to the GJCTC instructor Mr. Pritts, the first few companies that they approached, shied away from the opportunity, rightfully so. It’s easy to understand why some wouldn’t want to let students work on their product as there is extreme risk involved.

When we heard about this opportunity, we couldn’t pass it up! The parts that we are letting the students complete are not “difficult” parts, but that’s the trick of the trade. You are not always going to have complicated jobs on CNC machines. Not only are these students machining the parts, we are also providing them with purchase orders, shipping requirements, and due dates. This is quite literally as life-like as it gets. This helps us push product and helps the students get acclimated to real world scenarios.

Machine Shop Supervisor, Chris Rose has been working closely with GJCTC.

“When Mr. Pritts brought this idea to our attention, it was obvious he was very passionate about teaching his students and wanting to prepare them for a career after their time at GJCTC,” said Rose. “That made us all here at MCS want even more to make that happen, and seeing this project take off brings joy and excitement to us knowing these students will start out strong in their career and be the future of our workforce!”

Obviously, we are ecstatic for the opportunity to help. But how do the students feel about the work we provided?

Dante Henry, a senior at Richland High-School, is one of the students in the program. He plans to study marketing at Indiana University of Pennsylvania next fall.

“It’s always nice having a trade to fall back on,” Henry said. “Machine shops will always be looking for quality machinists. I find marketing extremely interesting and would like to make a career of it but if that doesn’t work, I know I’ll be able to go machine and make decent money.”

He also believes that working on MCS parts has pushed him to become a better machinist.

“It feels more like an actual job working on these parts. You have a due date and they need to be top-quality. That added sense of pressure has made us take this work seriously, making me a better machinist overall.”

We also asked Henry how younger students could benefit from projects like this in the future.

“It will make them more job-ready. We are the manufacturing workforce of the future, why wouldn’t companies want to get a head-start on training us?”

At MCS, we are proud to support the next generation of tradesmen and women. We also want to thank the students at GJCTC who stepped up to the challenge and have helped us get parts out the door. We couldn’t be more impressed with the product they have provided thus far.