Aluminium profiles for windows, doors and structures are pushed through dies under heat and pressure, then cut, aged and finished. Press crews, die staff and finishing lines work in sync, and heat and heavy billets bring risk.
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Share your requirementsAn aluminium profile maker heats billets and pushes them through steel dies on a press to form long sections. The profile runs on a table, is cooled, stretched, cut to length and aged in an oven. Many then go for anodising or powder coating, and finally for packing. The press crew, led by a press operator, works shifts around the heat and noise. The die room corrects and maintains dies, a skill learnt over years. Surface lines handle chemicals or powder and need controlled processes. Billet yards, packing and loading use contract helpers. Mistakes in temperature, speed or die condition lead to scrap quickly, and profiles are long and easy to bend in careless handling. See also HR for manufacturing.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in aluminium profile manufacturers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
His feel for temperature, speed and die behaviour decides recovery and scrap. If he is off, results change, and few can step in.
Correcting a die takes years of practice. A leaver takes that knowledge, and dies come back worse.
Hot billets, long profiles and fast pulling cause burns, strains and fatigue, particularly late in a shift.
Helpers lift and stack long sections without a method, and damage is only noticed at the customer.
Anodising tanks and powder booths call for gloves, masks, ventilation and procedure, yet training is brief.
Handover of die status, temperatures and defects is verbal, and the next shift starts by repeating errors.
Contract helpers come and go, with no induction or record of those who handle hot or heavy material.
Nearby plants pay a little more for experienced press and die staff, and pulling them back is hard.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Learning and Development; Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a aluminium profile manufacturers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
For each press and shift, name the operator, assistant and cover, and note who can run which size.
For each press and shift, name the operator, assistant and cover, and note who can run which size. The learning and development process builds a ladder.
A structured plan of supervised die correction, with sign-off at each step and a written note of common problems.
A structured plan of supervised die correction, with sign-off at each step and a written note of common problems.
How to lift, carry, rack and pack long sections, shown to every helper on arrival.
How to lift, carry, rack and pack long sections, shown to every helper on arrival.
A short shift handover sheet with die status, temperature, defects and open faults, signed by both supervisors.
A short shift handover sheet with die status, temperature, defects and open faults, signed by both supervisors.
A practical session and a record per person, plus mask and glove routines.
A practical session and a record per person, plus mask and glove routines. See health, safety and wellbeing.
Review press and die pay with compensation benchmarking and agree retention steps for key staff.
Review press and die pay with compensation benchmarking and agree retention steps for key staff.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A route from helper to press operator and die technician, with checks at each step.
Heat, lifting, chemical and noise routines, with who was trained and when.
A view of pay for press and die skills against nearby plants.
Shift rosters, rest rules and one record across own and contract helpers.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why the best operator often struggles as shift supervisor, what it costs the line, and a practical way to choose, prepare and back new supervisors in any kind of plant.
7 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
A shift, weekly and monthly safety routine for rubber plants that names who checks platen guards, mill trip bars, autoclave doors, burst-test cages and slings, and who acts on near misses.
7 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Train an assistant on live shifts, note the operator's settings and checks and recognise teaching as part of his job. Pay a step for the skill when it is shown.
A planned run of supervised corrections with sign-off, plus a notebook of common faults and fixes. Skill grows faster with structure than with watching alone.
Teach a method, provide racks and padding, and note damage by shift and handler. Fix the method before blame.
Training, gear issued, health checks and any incidents. Ask a qualified professional what applies to your unit.
Yes, but record entries, give a short safety induction and match attendance to the contractor's bill. Confirm contractor duties with a qualified professional.
We would ask who covers the press operator, how die skills are passed on and how shift handover works. A good opening project is a press crew chart plus a die room training plan. Scope is then written down for you to accept or change.
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