How should I pay assemblers and fitters?

Two fitters joined the same year. One can build a complete indexing table, set the cam timing and run it dry with no help. The other still needs a senior to check every dowel and every bearing fit. Their pay differs by very little. The first one has started taking calls from a rival builder across the industrial estate.

The machinery and equipment group page answers this question in two lines. Here is the longer version. Pay should follow a grade, and the grade should follow proof: which assemblies a person can put together, adjust and test alone. Everything below is about making that hold on a real assembly floor.

In most machine shops, fitter pay drifts. The joining rate depended on who hired and how late the order was. Increments land every April. A special raise appears when someone hints that a rival is hiring. A few years on, the wage sheet records bargaining and service, and says nothing about who can shim a headstock or time a cam follower.

Assemblers notice quickly. The quiet fitter who carries the hardest builds falls behind the one who argues. Helpers see no reason to learn shimming, bearing preload, circlip grooves or keyway fits, because nothing changes when they do. The owner pays for the drift twice: in raises to stop exits, and in rework on gearboxes and slides built by people paid above their skill.

• Helper. Cleans and deburrs parts and draws kits from stores. Slings and holds under instruction, and torques cap screws a fitter has marked with paint.
• Assembler. Builds simple sub-assemblies from a drawing, such as guards, base frames, pneumatic manifolds, cable chains and motor mounts, with a check at the end.
• Fitter. Reads general arrangement and detail drawings alone. Presses bearings with an arbor press or induction heater, sets clearances with feeler and dial gauges, fits keys, dowels and circlips, and corrects small misfits.
• Senior fitter. Builds and aligns a complete module such as a worm gearbox, a transfer unit or an indexing table, sets backlash and preload, then runs it dry with the electrician.
• Lead fitter. Takes a whole machine from kitting to trial, plans the build sequence, signs off juniors' work and goes to the designer when a drawing will not fit.

The labels matter less than the descriptions under them. Write those descriptions with your two strongest fitters, using sub-assemblies from your own product range. A pump builder's list will mention impeller clearance, wear rings and seal faces. A packaging machine maker's list will mention sealing jaws, cam followers, star-wheels and change parts. A machine tool builder's will mention gib strips and spindle runout. Generic wording such as 'good mechanical knowledge' cannot be tested, so it cannot carry pay.

1. 1

   Choose a live test job for each grade

   Use a real sub-assembly from the current order book, not a showpiece exercise. A drive unit, a slide with its gibs, a manifold with its fittings.

2. 2

   Name two judges

   A senior or lead fitter plus the inspector or the designer of that module. Two people make the result harder to dispute.

3. 3

   Mark what decides quality

   Dial readings on the coupling, feeler checks on gear mesh, the torque sequence on cap screws, cleanliness of mating faces, questions asked at the right moment, and any rework the judges ordered.

4. 4

   Record the result where pay is set

   The pass goes onto the person's skill record and their grade on the same day. Our skill matrix template for machinery makers has columns for this.

5. 5

   Allow a re-test on request

   A fitter who fails can ask again after a fixed gap, with a named senior to learn from in between.

Give each grade a band with a floor and a ceiling. The floor of the next grade should sit clearly above the middle of the one below, so promotion shows up in the first pay slip after it. Check the bands against what nearby builders pay for the same work, which is the job of compensation benchmarking. The benchmarking page for special purpose machine builders shows how that looks for a one-off builder.

Movement inside a band can follow consistency. Count rework tags raised against each person, trial faults traced back to their module, such as a weeping manifold or a whining gearbox, and whether juniors learn from them. Keep commissioning travel, site stay and overtime outside the grade. Those payments follow the trip or the hours, so folding them into basic pay confuses everyone the month a fitter stays home.

Rarely, in machine building. No two builds take the same hours, so an output target turns into an argument about the estimate. Worse, speed money tempts people to skip the dial check on a coupling or the dry run, and the fault surfaces at the customer's plant as vibration or a seized bearing. If you want an incentive, tie it to right-first-time trials and to modules that passed inspection with no rework tag. Our post on piece rate, daily wage or fixed pay sets out when each basis fits.

Every shop has one. He has been there longer than the radial drill, knows where every jig and lifting eyebolt is kept, and has never passed a fitter's test. Do not cut his pay. Offer the route to assembler with a mentor and a test date. Some people will take it. Others prefer the work they know, and that choice deserves respect, provided the grade stays honest.

A visible top grade helps more than a one-off raise. Lead fitters also stay where they are trusted with whole machines and a say in the build plan. Make teaching part of the lead grade, and count each junior who passes a test as part of the lead's own review.

For help writing grade descriptions or setting bands for your shop, tell us about your unit and we will suggest where to begin.