About This Career

Sets up, operates, or tends machines to crush, grind, or polish materials, such as coal, glass, grain, stone, food, or rubber.

This career is part of the Manufacturing cluster Production pathway.

A person in this career:

• Observes operation of equipment to ensure continuity of flow, safety, and efficient operation, and to detect malfunctions.
• Examines materials, ingredients, or products, visually or with hands, to ensure conformance to established standards.
• Moves controls to start, stop, or adjust machinery and equipment that crushes, grinds, polishes, or blends materials.
• Cleans, adjusts, and maintains equipment, using hand tools.
• Weighs or measures materials, ingredients, or products at specified intervals to ensure conformance to requirements.
• Dislodges and clears jammed materials or other items from machinery and equipment, using hand tools.
• Reads work orders to determine production specifications and information.
• Tends accessory equipment, such as pumps and conveyors, to move materials or ingredients through production processes.
• Records data from operations, testing, and production on specified forms.
• Loads materials into machinery and equipment, using hand tools.

Working Conditions and Physical Demands

People who do this job report that:

• You would often handle loads up to 20 lbs., sometimes up to 50 lbs. You might do a lot of lifting, carrying, pushing or pulling.
• Work in this occupation involves use of protective items such as safety shoes, glasses, gloves, hearing protection, a hard hat, or personal flotation devices
• Exposure to pollutants, gases, dust, fumes, odors, poor ventilation, etc.
• Exposed to hazardous equipment such as saws, machinery, or vehicular traffic more than once a month
• Sound and noise levels are loud and distracting

Working in this career involves (physical activities):

• Picking out a particular sound in the presence of other sounds
• Identifying color and seeing differences in color, including shades and brightness
• Seeing clearly at a distance
• Detecting sounds and hearing the differences between sounds of different pitch and loudness
• Seeing clearly up close
• Speaking clearly enough to be able to be understood by others
• Identifying and understanding the speech of another person
• Lifting, pushing, pulling, or carrying objects
• Using abdominal and lower back muscles repeatedly or over time without tiring

Work Hours and Travel

• Rotating shift work