Tom Till stands in front of a CNC machine at the Orthopedic & Advanced Manufacturing Training Center in Warsaw. He worked with CNC machines when they first appeared in the early 1980s. Photo by Tim Ashley.

By Tim Ashley
InkFreeNews

WARSAW — Tom Till’s life has often been characterized by stepping out of his comfort zone and making tough decisions. But those decisions have opened doors of opportunity for him, such as his current position as director of advanced manufacturing for the Ivy Tech’s Orthopedic & Advanced Manufacturing Training Center in Warsaw.

Till grew up in Indianapolis and graduated from Lawrence Central High School in 1976. At the age of 18 he moved to South Whitley to live with a brother and eventually met and married Danette, from Roann.

Saying he had no skills to offer employers, after high school Till decided to enroll at IPFW in Fort Wayne. But it simply didn’t work out for him and six weeks later, he dropped out of college.

He was hired by Gripco Fasteners in South Whitley and went to work in the machine shop. “I found the Indiana Vocational Technical College in Fort Wayne, which is now Ivy Tech,” he said. Gripco offered to pay for his classes so he started taking machine tool classes.

“They were teaching me the same thing I was doing at work,” he said, adding he earned A’s for the first two classes he took.

In 1982 Gripco started using computer numerical control machines, more commonly known as CNC and which are widely used in manufacturing facilities now. “It automated the job a lot,” Till noted.

Knowing Till had done well in college and had a good work record, the company offered to let him be a programmer for CNC machines. He went on to finish his college degree after four years at what is now Ivy Tech.

Later he started working on an engineering degree at IPFW and heard DePuy in Warsaw was looking for engineers. “I walked in (the DePuy plant) and right away I noticed how clean and cool it was,” he said. “I thought that is something I want to be a part of.”

Till applied and was hired as an engineer at DePuy. For the next 10 years he was a manufacturing engineer and then for 15 years supervised manufacturing engineers.

He recalled one of many challenging problems he faced at DePuy was a situation where there was too much copper in the wastewater. The company faced heavy fines by the City of Warsaw for exceeding the allowable limits. After much trial and error, taking samples and testing, he and his team figured out replacing two specific copper pipes with plastic piping would solve the problem.

Also while at DePuy he was on a advanced manufacturing committee working with Orthoworx to come up with a training program to train people how to run CNC machines and other classes. “We all saw that a lot of machinists would be retiring in the next few years,” he said.

In 2013, the director of advanced manufacturing position came open at Ivy Tech. Till was able to go to work for the same college from which he had earned a degree several years earlier.

Ivy Tech later asked him to participate in the Kosciusko Leadership Academy. While in KLA, he said he learned a lot about Warsaw and also Kosciusko County. Enough to persuade him to move from South Whitley to Warsaw in 2016.

Till works in an office at OAMTC and talks to prospective students about their interests. He said he also makes himself available for current students who may need a mentor to get the encouragement they need if they are struggling.

He also plans the classes offered at the training center and is always on the lookout to find good instructors for the classes.

About 80% of the students are already working somewhere else and many of them want a job with more responsibility and more pay. “They want to ‘skill up’ so they are taking some classes to get to the next level,” he commented.

Tom said he enjoys spending time with his wife Danette, who is a social worker for Hambright & Associates in Warsaw and does counseling, and also spending time with their grandchildren. They attend First United Methodist Church in Warsaw and live at Pike Lake in Warsaw. Tom also is the vice president of the KLA board of directors.

“I get a lot of enjoyment out of solving problems,” he said.