When your most experienced person retires: succession planning for aerospace and defence component makers

The chief toolmaker at a jig and fixture shop predates the building itself. He spots a drill jig by feel and knows why the customer's gauge drawings carry an odd datum note. He is also the only person their receiving inspector phones directly. He mentions over tea that he plans to stop next spring. Everyone nods. Nobody has learned his job.

Our workforce notes for aero-component suppliers flag this as the sharpest risk in toolrooms, and it runs through machining, inspection and avionics cells too. The fix is old-fashioned: decide who learns what, and start early.

• Hand craft: scraping, lapping, spotting with marking blue, judging a slip-gauge stack, fitting a bush so a pin slides without play.
• Part history: why a fixture has an odd relief, which revision once caused trouble, which material lot from which mill machined badly.
• Programme logic: the reasoning behind a five-axis toolpath or a probing routine that nobody else has opened in years.
• Customer trust: a first name relationship with the buyer's quality engineer, which quietly smooths concessions and queries.
• Judgement: when to refuse a job, when to ask for a drawing change, when a near-limit reading is acceptable and when it must be rejected.

Each of these needs a different way of passing on. Craft needs hands. History needs a written diary. Trust needs introductions. Judgement needs time spent making decisions with the veteran beside you.

Owners hesitate to raise retirement because it feels like pushing someone out. Veterans sometimes avoid it because their standing depends on being indispensable. Production pressure crowds out joint work. And small units rarely keep a list of retirement dates, so a departure arrives as news rather than as a planned event.

1. 1

   Note everyone approaching retirement

   Ask openly in reviews about plans. Record expected dates, accepting they may change. Include anyone whose health or family situation may bring a date forward.

2. 2

   Break each person's role into its pieces

   With the veteran, list craft, history, programme logic, customer relationships and judgement calls. Mark which pieces nobody else holds.

3. 3

   Choose a successor for each piece

   One person may not take everything. Perhaps a senior fitter absorbs the craft, a planner the part history and the quality engineer the customer contact.

4. 4

   Plan joint jobs on real work

   Book named jobs where the successor leads and the veteran watches, starting with simpler part families and moving to the awkward ones.

5. 5

   Start a fitting diary

   The successor writes up each joint job: what was done, why, what the veteran corrected. Over months it becomes the toolroom's memory.

6. 6

   Record demonstrations

   Film short clips of hand techniques at the bench, stored on the unit's controlled system, not personal phones.

7. 7

   Introduce the successor to customers

   Bring the successor to inspection visits and copy them on technical correspondence well before the veteran leaves.

8. 8

   Agree the last stage

   Decide whether the veteran tapers to fewer days or remains reachable by phone for a season, and what the role becomes when they do.

Veteran: ______  Role: ______  Expected stopping date: ______.
Craft pieces only this person holds (for example jig-grinder set-ups, bush fitting, lapping a gauge face): ______.
Successor for craft: ______; joint jobs booked: ______; fitting diary started on: ______.
Part history held (fixture families, troublesome revisions, mill lots): ______; written up by: ______.
Programme logic held (toolpaths, touch-probe routines, post-processor tweaks): ______; successor: ______.
Customer contacts held: ______; successor introduced at visits on: ______.
Judgement calls to share (refusing jobs, near-limit readings, drawing change requests): ______.
Last-stage arrangement agreed: shorter week / on-call / none; from date: ______.
Reviewed by owner and HR on: ______.

Fill one map per veteran, with the veteran in the room. Revisit it each quarter. A blank line on the map is the most useful finding it can give you, because it shows the piece of knowledge nobody is yet catching.

Readiness is a sequence of things the successor has done, not a feeling. Has the successor fitted a gauge from the customer's toughest family alone, with the veteran only checking? Has the customer's inspector accepted work signed by the successor? Has the successor refused a job or asked for a drawing change on their own judgement? When the answers are yes, the handover is real.

Successors take on harder work, and pay should move as they do. Titles matter too: senior toolmaker, lead programmer, deputy chief inspector. For the veteran, the final years should feel like a culmination. Make teaching the centrepiece of the role, say so publicly, and mark the retirement properly. People watch how the unit treats its seniors and draw conclusions about their own future.

Toolroom handovers get detailed treatment in master-fitter succession for jig makers. Matching retirement dates to future fixture orders appears under manpower outlook for fixture shops. Our successor-readiness consulting helps owners build the list and the plan with the veterans themselves.