Tornos US President Gives Back to Community

When Scott Kowalski, president of Tornos US, received a letter in the mail requesting input from local industry to help re-build the manufacturing program for a high school in his hometown, he was immediately interested. The letter came from Anthony Genovese, Industry and Technology instructor at Addison Trail High School and was an open invitation to “invest in the education of possible future employees.”

Addison, population 36,975, is a village located west of the Chicago Metropolitan Area that accounts for about 10% of all manufacturing jobs in Illinois*.  Kowalski grew up in Addison before graduating from the Tooling & Manufacturing Association’s (TMA) training program, and then working as a mold-maker in a nearby town and eventually moving on to machine tool sales and management.

As a member of the Advisory Board, Kowalski will be part of a team of local professionals (that includes representatives from the TMA) who will review the current manufacturing curriculum and facilities and help modernize the Addison Trails program for the upcoming school year and into the future.

Says Kowalski, “We need to help train those kids for real jobs in manufacturing.  hey need to make sure the program is moving in the right direction. Right now, one of the problems is that the school has manual machine focus. They need to advance to a CNC-based program. This is true of schools across the country. So the board will be discussing the future of the program and the obstacles they face.”

The Addison Trail mission statement makes this promise: that all students have opportunities to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to be lifelong learners and productive, responsible citizens in a changing society. With the help of volunteers like Kowalski, this mission can be accomplished not only for students in manufacturing in Addison but across the country.

*According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 59,297 manufacturing jobs from 2,132 employers in the small town of Addison, Illinois. If you take the average number of manufacturing jobs in Illinois for the period of January 2008 through April 2009 (647,550 jobs), then that means the city of Addison accounts for 10% of Illinois’ manufacturing jobs.

Tornos US, a division of The Tornos Group headquartered in Moutier, Switzerland, is responsible for the marketing, sales and service of Tornos single spindle turning systems, bar feeders, ESCO coil-fed turning centers, and Almac milling machines in North America. http://www.tornos.us