Twenty-six students attended Endicott Clay’s Manufacturing Day. The purpose of Endicott Clay manufacturing day is to expose students to manufacturing in our community and to promote the different jobs available at the plant. Students from many local schools got the opportunity to see first hand how the manufacturing of bricks takes place. Endicott Clay manufactures over 100,000,000 bricks per year. If you do the math and each brick is worth 40 cents, that equates to 40 million in sales. Endicott bricks are shipped all over the United States and Canada. Endicott bricks are used in many huge structures such as Yankee Stadium. The plant never shuts down with three shifts running all the time.
Endicott Clay employs around 350 workers. The students got to see many different jobs at the plant. Starting wages for first shift are $11.00 per hour, second shift $12.00 per hour, and third shift $13.00 per hour with overtime at time and a half after 40 hours. Endicott Clay has workers in office positions, sales, engineering, plant management, heavy equipment operators, machinists, welders, artists, carpenters, and maintenance to name a few.
Students got to explore the manufacturing lines where they saw many different processes. Robotics is used extensively at the plant. Robots lift heavy bricks and place them on carriages where they will go into a kiln for firing. It takes over two days for the bricks to be fully fired. They also have an art mural department where artists carve green bricks. It is there that the bricks are numbered and the mural is disassembled and shipped to the customer. Fairbury students also got to see one of the original “bee hive” kilns that were used in the making of the bricks back when the company was first in business.
It was a great day and a positive experience for our students. At the end of the tour, there was a question and answer session with the President and CEO of the company, Ryan Parker. He answered many questions. He also told students that a 2 year degree is very helpful in getting a job at the factory. A group photo was even taken in front of two huge Caterpillar scrapers that they use in the mine. Thank you to all that went. Fairbury was well represented!