When your most experienced person retires: succession planning for CNC and precision machining shops

The master fitter in a die shop joined before the second floor was built. He spots a die with Prussian blue and knows from the pattern where to stone. He judges punch clearance from the burr on the strip and the sound of the shear. He knows how much grind stock to leave because one heat treater always distorts long sections. He knows which customer's press runs slightly out of parallel. Over tea he mentions that he will go back to his village after next Diwali. Nothing he knows is written anywhere.

Retirement is the slow, predictable version of the setter risk set out on the hub for die shops, tool rooms and machining units. Because it is predictable, it can be planned. Most shops still meet it as a surprise.

• Judgement on fits and clearances. When to stone, lap or regrind, and when a die is good enough to try out.
• Machine quirks. The backlash on the old jig borer, the surface grinder that needs a long warm-up, the lathe whose tailstock sits low.
• Supplier knowledge. Which heat treater distorts, which casting source leaves hard spots, which steel stockist mixes grades.
• Customer knowledge. Whose press shut height wanders, whose quality engineer rejects on cosmetic marks.
• Paper and files. Notebooks, marked-up drawings and a private folder of programs nobody else has opened.
• Teaching itself. The person who answers everyone's questions, and whose absence makes the floor go quiet.

• Retirement is treated as a farewell date with sweets and a shawl, not as a handover project with months of work in it.
• Raising it feels disrespectful to someone who built half the shop's tools.
• No successor is obvious, because the younger fitters have only ever filed, drilled and polished under him.
• The owner fears that talking about it will make the senior leave sooner.
• The senior himself may not have fixed a date and keeps it vague.

• List every person whose departure would stop a whole class of work, and note any retirement plans you already know about.
• For each, count last year's jobs that only they could finish.
• Find out whether notebooks, program folders or marked-up drawings exist outside their own drawer or pen drive.
• Name who would take over each class of work tomorrow, and be honest about how ready that person is.
• Scan forthcoming orders and pick the jobs that would make good teaching jobs.

1. 1

   Open the conversation early and with respect

   Ask about his plans, and frame the handover as protecting what he built. Agree together how his final year should look.

2. 2

   List what he knows, job by job

   Walk through the last year's jobs with him: each die, mould, fixture or difficult part. Note the decisions that only he made.

3. 3

   Name one or two successors

   Split his work by type where you can, such as press tools and moulds, or programming and setting. One successor alone becomes the next dependence.

4. 4

   Pair them on live work

   Every repair or new build that comes in goes to the successor first, with the senior beside him. Practice on real dies beats any classroom.

5. 5

   Record as you go

   The successor keeps the handover log, takes photos of spotting patterns and setups, and films short phone clips of techniques that are hard to describe.

6. 6

   Hand over decisions in stages

   First the successor decides and the senior checks. Later the successor decides alone and the senior reviews afterwards.

7. 7

   Recognise the senior's teaching

   Give it a title, an allowance or a place in his review. Teaching his replacement should feel like a final honour, not a dismissal.

8. 8

   Decide on contact after retirement

   Some seniors are happy to visit for the odd difficult tryout. Agree the terms in writing before the farewell, with advice.

Feel is hard to write down, but the decisions around it are not. A short log per job, kept by the successor, captures each decision and its reason: why this die was shimmed, why that cavity was polished in one direction. Correcting it costs the senior a few minutes and shows quickly what the successor has understood.

Job: die, mould, fixture or part number, and customer.
What was done: build, repair, modification or tryout.
Judgement calls: what the senior decided, and why he decided it.
Tools, gauges and machines used, with any quirks noticed.
Supplier or customer notes, such as heat treatment distortion or press setting habits.
Photos and clips: where they are stored and what each shows.
Written by the successor. Checked and initialled by the senior.

• Spark-gap allowance left on each EDM electrode, and why it differs for roughing and finishing.
• Springback allowance on bends, and which steel coils behave worse.
• Stripper spring preload and pilot punch length on progression dies.
• Polish direction and draw radius on deep-draw tools.
• Grind stock left before heat treatment, by supplier and by section thickness.

Those five lines are the kind of judgement a log should hold. None of them is on the drawing, and every one of them leaves with the master if nobody writes it down.

The same plan fits other seniors. Think of a grinder whose wheel-dressing feel took decades, or a five-axis programmer who carries the hardest toolpaths. It fits the setter who has run the bar-fed lathes since installation, too. The detail differs; the steps do not. For grinding, the precision grinding succession page covers wheel skill in particular. Die and mould craft is treated in the succession notes for die and mould shops.

Succession planning widens this from one retirement to every critical role, so the next one is not a surprise either. Where the risk sits with working setters rather than retirees, our piece on shops held together by a few setters sets out the fix.