Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/138735
Jocelyn Salinas learns about manufacturing on the factory foor C onsumerism's reproductive system: a brawny deliverance of repetition and accuracy, the paper doll technique perfected by 26 punch presses baring grease-stained teeth that crunch into coils of steel unrolling like Scotch tape — chomp, chomp, chomp — only to spit out necessary forgettables: refrigerator door hinges, oven brackets, oven doors. One mighty beast that could dwarf a two-story home weighs 1,100 tons or roughly 150 elephants. It shakes the foor with each bite. At a 140,000-square-foot plant dotting Preston Highway's industrial plains, products enter the world efciently. It's called nth/works, as in precision (the company's former name was Precision Tool and Die and Machine Co.) to the nth degree. Say it, and the roof of your mouth mousetraps the syllable. Unusual name aside, 300 workers manipulate metal on two shifts, fve days a week, assembling parts for General Electric and Toyota. 60 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.13 Since September, fve Jefersontown High School students in bright orange T-shirts with the word APPRENTICE spanning their shoulder blades have spent weekday afternoons on the factory foor. Tey're here as part of a new program nth/works devised to recruit energetic, skilled young workers. Seventeen-year-old Jocelyn Salinas is one. Delicate white rose earrings in her lobes, a tape measure at her hip, wrenches in her back jeans pocket, she concentrates on a square piece of steel. It's a warm May afternoon. Fans spin 80-degree air blowing in from open doors. Seven and a half inches minus three and three quarters, she computes silently. Salinas subtracts the width of a wheel in an attempt to center it onto the steel plate. Eventually, she'll weld it to the bottom of a cart that will haul equipment around the factory foor. Upon high school graduation,