FORGING A PARTNERSHIP ON THE SHOP FLOOR


A brief history of the Army’s oldest arsenal


Watervliet Arsenal opened in 1813 on the banks of the Hudson River, just north of Albany, New York, producing leather and metal goods, including gun carriages, cartridges and saddles for the young U.S. Army during the War of 1812. During the Civil War, the arsenal produced 7 million bullets a month. In the 1880s the arsenal refined its focus to large-scale metalworking and earned its nickname of “America’s can- non factory.” World War II saw the arsenal’s highest production and personnel numbers. From 1941 to 1944, more than 9,300 employees at the arsenal (almost one-third of them women) manufactured more than 23,000 cannons. Today the arsenal continues to manufacture the 120 mm Abrams tank gun, 155 mm howitzer cannons, and 60 mm and 81 mm mortars.


independent of the cycles of conflict and peacetime. Te skilled workforce is as much of an investment as the forge equip- ment, and a trained metal processor can’t be easily or cheaply replaced. It can take up to four years before a metal processor reaches full potential: 12 to 18 months to earn a forge operation certification, followed by welding certifications and specialized training from GFM, the com- pany that made the rotary forge. Workers need advanced hand-foot-eye coordina- tion and a fundamental understanding of metallurgy (how much heat a given metal or alloy can tolerate and at what stage), plus knowledge of welding, composite manufacturing and heat treatment.


In 2013, just five workers, all nearing retirement age, staffed the rotary forge at Watervliet. Today there are 20. Te upgraded rotary forge is fed by new gas furnaces that are 20 percent more effi- cient. And while the fiscal environment has not materially changed, the arsenal’s future looks much brighter.


MODERN-DAY MISSION Before the public-private partnership, the arsenal’s fortunes rose and fell with cycles of conflict. (SOURCE: USAASC)


wound down, and the arsenal lost work- ers. Sequestration worsened the pain.


“We had to furlough employees, and that prompted many to think about retiring, so that made skills retention even more urgent,” Turcotte said.


Operating the 1970s-era rotary forge that produces gun tubes (and other cylindrical objects) is “an expensive


156 Army AL&T Magazine July-September 2016


machining process,” Turcotte explained. It’s a unique piece of equipment with a high fixed cost of ownership, including salaries and training for specialized work- ers, maintenance and supplies, whether it’s producing 100 gun barrels or 1,000.


Te jump in demand after 9/11 masked the deeper difficulty of keeping the forge running and retaining a skilled workforce


SUCCESS NOT GUARANTEED How did they go about it? Turcotte and Tracy Rudolph, president and chief oper- ating officer of Electralloy, both point to trust as the thing that made the partner- ship possible. Te government had to clear regulatory hurdles that took years to navigate, and Electralloy had to be willing to invest “well over $10 million” up front, according to Rudolph. Tey credit “a real trust at the outset,” built on weekly supervisory meetings, consulta- tions with employees and years of open, frank discussion as factors in overcom- ing the challenges that occurred as they set up the partnership. And in hindsight, it’s clear that the partnership could have fallen victim to any number of business- as-usual biases, from “that’s not how we do things” to “the government moves too slowly.”


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