A wire EDM shop cuts hardened metal with a travelling wire and sparks, sometimes unattended through the night. A small team of programmers and operators works a slow process where one bad overnight run costs a day.
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Share your requirementsA wire EDM shop cuts conductive metals by electrical discharge, drawing a thin brass wire through hardened steel to make punches, die inserts, gauges and profile parts. Work is slow, exact and one-off, from tool rooms or component makers who need cut profiles. A programmer builds the cut path, an operator threads the wire, clamps the part and starts the cycle, and some cuts run overnight with nobody watching. If the wire snaps or the part shifts, the night is lost. Machines are costly and the people who set them up well are few. Deionised water, filters and wire spools need steady care. The wider picture sits on the manufacturing overview.
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 wire EDM shops. 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.
A snapped wire at the start of the night wastes hours, and no one is answerable for checking before leaving.
Threading failures and poor cut finish are cured by one or two people while others wait for them.
Paths for complex profiles need a skilled programmer, and a queue behind that person holds up every machine.
Raising the cut speed through settings can cost accuracy or finish, and nobody is sure who may touch parameters.
Hours for a cut are guessed from memory, and a wrong guess turns into unpaid overtime.
Nobody clearly owns filter and wire care, so quality slips and breakdowns appear.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Learning and Development; Employee Administration; Performance Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
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.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
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.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why, and which of them mattered.
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 wire EDM shops business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Wire threaded, part clamped, cut running and checked, plus a call-out rule.
Wire threaded, part clamped, cut running and checked, plus a call-out rule. The shift and leave routine can cover a simple night watch.
From loading, to threading, to tuning cut parameters, to tapered and stacked parts, each step signed off.
From loading, to threading, to tuning cut parameters, to tapered and stacked parts, each step signed off. Pay benchmarking links the grades to pay.
Put a second person on live jobs, document the paths and recognise the skill in pay.
Put a second person on live jobs, document the paths and recognise the skill in pay. A training plan supports it.
A written limit for operators and a rule for when to call the programmer, so speed changes are agreed and not guessed.
A written limit for operators and a rule for when to call the programmer, so speed changes are agreed and not guessed.
One person with a daily and weekly checklist for filters, water quality and wire stock, reviewed by the supervisor.
One person with a daily and weekly checklist for filters, water quality and wire stock, reviewed by the supervisor.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. Work through the checks using a recent operating period. The time needed depends on the records you hold; note missing evidence and use the findings to choose a priority.
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.
Night watch, start-of-night checks and handover for unattended runs.
Staged training so more people can thread, tune and program.
Grades for operators and programmers set against nearby shops.
Writes down who may change parameters, who owns consumables and who calls out on failures.
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 can struggle 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
Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
7 min readRead article
A practical design for an IT services appraisal cycle: when to run it, how to rate fairly across projects, and how to explain hikes so they hold.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Use a start-of-night checklist signed by the operator, a call-out rule and a morning review of failed runs. The pattern over weeks shows what to fix.
At least two who can handle complex paths, so one absence does not stall the shop. Share jobs between them regularly.
Within written limits, yes. Beyond those they call the programmer, and each change is logged.
Record real time against estimate on every job and review it monthly. In a few months shop data replaces one person's feel.
Count finished runs without wire breaks or rework and share the credit across the cell. Avoid rewards that push people to speed up unsafely.
We would count failed overnight runs, list who can thread and tune alone and look at the programmer's backlog. A start-of-night routine with an operator grade ladder is a fair opening job. Scope is put in writing after we speak.
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