Precision manufacturing has a precision workforce problem
ALIGN Precision is a national aerospace and defense manufacturer supporting mission-critical programs across some of the most demanding manufacturing environments in the country.
Laborup started with ALIGN at its Tuscaloosa, AL facility. The immediate need was machining talent, along with NC/CMM programming and quality. These were not generic manufacturing roles. ALIGN needed people with the technical depth to walk into a high-precision environment, understand the equipment and processes, and contribute quickly.
The challenge became even harder across the broader company. A machinist who is perfect for Tuscaloosa may be completely wrong for Arizona, California, Pennsylvania, or Maine. Different plants run different equipment, serve different programs, and need different combinations of machining, programming, inspection, and hands-on experience.
7 facilities meant 7 different versions of qualified
Our team worked directly with ALIGN’s leaders and local facilities to understand what the work actually looked like at each plant. Machines, controls, setups, programming responsibility, materials, tolerances, inspection, shift structure, and the level of ownership expected from each person.
That became structured data inside Laborup. We built a shared taxonomy across ALIGN while keeping the differences between facilities intact.
Then our agents went to work.
Laborup’s sourcing agents worked across our manufacturing workforce network to identify people whose actual experience lined up with each operation. Voice and text agents engaged workers, learned more about their skills and preferences, qualified them against the work, and kept the process moving. Scheduling agents helped move the strongest people directly into interviews without the back-and-forth that slows traditional hiring down.
Our team stayed in the loop throughout, working directly with ALIGN’s managers and using feedback from interviews, hires, and retention to continually sharpen the model.
In the first 6 months, Laborup screened roughly 4,000 to 5,000 workers across ALIGN’s markets to find the relatively small group whose experience truly matched the work.
The goal was never volume. It was precision.
1 facility became 7
Tuscaloosa worked, so ALIGN expanded the partnership.
Within 6 months, Laborup grew from 1 facility to 7 across Alabama, Arizona, Pennsylvania, California, and Maine, supporting machining, NC/CMM programming, engineering, quality, tooling, and other skilled roles.
Across the network, ALIGN hired > 4x faster, at 50%+ lower cost, while Laborup hires delivered 93% retention.
The bigger advantage is continuity. Laborup does not relearn ALIGN every time another facility needs talent. The system already understands the company, carries forward what it has learned from previous outcomes, and then adds the equipment, managers, roles, and labor market specific to the next plant.
What started as support for 1 difficult facility became a workforce platform, a set of agents, and a team ALIGN could deploy across the country.
