How one of the world’s most important tooling companies tackled skilled labor
Kennametal (NYSE: KMT) is one of the most recognizable names in machining. Its cutting tools, tooling systems, advanced materials, and wear-resistant technologies are used by manufacturers to make everything from aircraft and automobiles to energy equipment and medical devices. Today, roughly 8,100 Kennametal employees serve customers in nearly 100 countries, generating more than $2 billion in annual revenue.
Ask almost any machine shop and they know Kennametal. But like many manufacturers, the company was running into one of the hardest constraints in the industry: finding enough skilled people to run the machines.
The challenge was particularly acute around experienced machinists, CNC operators, programmers, supervisors, and other technical manufacturing roles. Many of Kennametal’s facilities operate in smaller or highly competitive manufacturing markets where the pool of experienced talent is limited. As the business ramped hiring, those roles became harder and slower to fill.
Laborup started with a single facility in Tennessee. The question was straightforward: could we build a better way to find the highly skilled people Kennametal needed, particularly the machinists who were becoming increasingly difficult to reach through traditional channels?
A machinist is more than a job title
Before deploying Laborup, we worked to understand what Kennametal actually needed at the facility level. Not simply “CNC machinist,” but the machines, processes, materials, controls, tolerances, programming experience, shifts, and level of autonomy behind the title.
That distinction matters. Two people can both call themselves machinists and have completely different capabilities. Running production on a 3-axis mill is different from setting up and programming complex 5-axis work. Fanuc is different from Mazak. An operator is different from a setup machinist. In machining, the details are the job.
We structured that information inside Laborup and matched it against our manufacturing workforce network. Our platform could understand not only where someone had worked, but what they had made, which machines they had run, which processes they knew, and what kind of operation they were most likely to succeed in.
That allowed us to reach well beyond the small pool of people actively applying for jobs. Laborup could identify skilled workers already in the market, engage them directly, qualify them against the actual work, and move the strongest fits into Kennametal’s process quickly.
One plant proved it. Six states followed.
Kennametal began filling critical roles roughly 5× faster, at more than 50% lower cost, with more than 3× stronger retention than the traditional hiring channels it had been relying on.
The relationship expanded quickly. What started at one Tennessee facility grew across six states, supporting Kennametal teams in very different labor markets and making Laborup a go-to partner when the company needs difficult manufacturing talent.
And the more we work together, the better the system gets. Every facility teaches Laborup more about Kennametal. Every machinist screened, interview completed, hire made, and worker retained adds to our understanding of what great looks like across the company.
Kennametal no longer has to start from scratch every time another plant needs a machinist. The knowledge compounds from one role, one plant, and one market to the next.
