A gear maker cuts teeth on blanks by hobbing and shaping, heat treats them and checks the profile. The people problem is a long learning curve on set-ups and a few setters who hold the cutting knowledge.
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Share your requirementsA gear manufacturer begins with forged or bar blanks, turns them, cuts teeth on hobbing, shaping or milling machines, deburrs, heat treats, then grinds or hones where limits are tighter and checks the profile. Some units take job work from gearbox builders and machine makers, running small batches with frequent changeovers. A hobbing setter picks the hob, fits change gears and sets depth. The inspection room reads tooth profile and run-out. Few people nearby can set helical or large module work, so they are well known and easily lured away. 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 gear 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.
Change gears, hob and depth come from experience, so when the setter is away the job waits or a less sure hand tries it.
Job-work orders from several buyers keep the line switching, and time leaks away when changeover knowledge is unwritten.
Only a couple of people can read a profile chart, so lots queue behind them.
When teeth move after quenching, cutting and heat treatment each point at the other.
Careless storage and handling chip the teeth of the tool, and nobody owns the loss.
They pick up what they can beside a setter, with no order or check, so each new person repeats old mistakes.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Learning and Development; Career and Succession Management; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
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.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
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 gear manufacturers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Name the families, such as spur, helical and large module, and the set-up level each grade may take on.
Name the families, such as spur, helical and large module, and the set-up level each grade may take on. Align pay using compensation benchmarking.
A set-up card per gear part, kept at the machine, updated by the setter and checked by the supervisor.
A set-up card per gear part, kept at the machine, updated by the setter and checked by the supervisor.
Pick a patient operator and give a planned route to read charts and gauges.
Pick a patient operator and give a planned route to read charts and gauges. See learning and development for a method.
Measure and record the blank before quench and after, so distortion is traced to its stage without blame.
Measure and record the blank before quench and after, so distortion is traced to its stage without blame. See performance management.
Issue and return logged by name, with a monthly look at damage so losses show early.
Issue and return logged by name, with a monthly look at damage so losses show early.
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.
Grades and pay that reflect set-up skill across gear families.
A planned route for helpers and operators to become setters and profile inspectors.
Clear role definitions for setters, inspectors and hob store staff.
Hiring scarce setters and inspectors with a proper trial on the machine.
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
A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
7 min readRead article
Simple variable pay structures for product and engineering teams: four options, why individual metrics backfire, a build plan and a one page outline to adapt.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Train a second person on the same gear families, keep set-up cards and give the setter a visible grade. A departure should slow work but not stop it.
Write down the best changeover, have the setter lead a short review after each hard job and stage hobs and gears before the machine stops. Small steps add up.
Safe handling, deburring and loading, then simple turning, then a hobbing set-up watched against a checklist. Sign off each step before the next.
At least two people, so inspection never waits on one. Choose patient operators and train them on real parts with a mentor.
Record part state before and after heat treatment. With the facts on the table, talk turns to the process and not to a person.
We would ask which gears only one setter can handle, go through last month's changeover times and see who reads profile charts. A good first piece of work is a setter ladder by gear family. Scope is agreed in writing after we talk.
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