A process engineer in finishing in Moorefield, West Virginia was at the top list of hundreds of wood manufacturing positions opened at job placement website Monster.com, along with a scenic carpenter at Staging Dimensions in New Castle, Delaware, and a wood fabrication technician for Janicki Industries Inc., in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. 

As cabinetry, furniture and architectural woodwork firms enjoy the benefits of recovery, they are also facing a shortage of workers, in both skilled and semi-skilled positions. 

EDUCATION Find wood industry educational resources A list of scholarship programs and educational institutions that includes professional development courses such as this recent finishing seminar at Madison College in Wisconsin.

Janicki Industries (below), which supplies composite tools, prototypes and parts, fabricating advanced composites and other materials including engineered wood, uses its own proprietary, large-scale, high-precision 5-axis CNC mills. Serving the aerospace, marine, energy, space and transportation industries, Janicki uses SAP for enterprise resource management. 

Aaron Carlson Corporation, a 125-year-old architectural woodworking company in Minneapolis, has posted 12 positions at Monster.com in the last two months, including salesmen, cabinetmaking trainees, and truck drivers, as well as executive level Project Managers for millwork projects. 

Aaron Carlson says its project managers "are members of the senior management team and are primarily responsible for managing projects so that our team creates high levels of customer satisfaction. Secondarily, PMs develop new business, and grow repeat business, through relationships they cultivate with satisfied members of their customers project teams."

Exactly as would be expected, project managers work with the drafting room on the drawings, and make certain the drawings are in compliance with proposals. Projects are broken down into shop tickets to which production hours are assigned, based on the estimator's bid and the project manager makes certain the work can be produced within the capacity constraints of the shop.

large scale, high precision prototypes, tools and production partsFounded and run by engineers, technical capabilites and innovative engineering solutions are the core of our business model. We specialize in designing and manufacturing very large scale, high precision prototypes, tools and production parts