Mr. Montez King’s greatest contribution to American manufacturing to date surrounds a revolutionary approach to 21st century manufacturing skills training for educators and employers. His fresh framework evolves training systems to training methods. Mr. King was the first to recognize that many manufacturing companies adopted an approach to training without addressing exactly how they would transfer knowledge and skills. Companies universally agreed that training on the job is an effective approach to developing their workforce. This approach usually includes several other components and is referred to as a training system. However, Mr. King witnessed the many struggles that companies continued to experience up-skilling their workforce, despite adopting these traditional training systems, from the eyes of an apprentice and trainer. These experiences led to the conclusion that, in Mr. King’s words, “It’s not the training system that is failing our country, it’s us mistakenly promoting a training system as training methods.” He realized that training methods are how an organization transfers knowledge from their stellar employees to their not-yet stellar employees, and this is where most organizations struggle. Further, these methods are not the same for very organization nor should they be. Mr. King details his methodological approach to on-the-job-training (OJT) in the book, “The Ultimate Guide to Enhancing Your Training Program”.

Mr. King could see flaws in traditional apprenticeships very early in his career. He was born in 1973 and grew up in the poverty-stricken areas of Baltimore where his smart, single, working mother instilled good character and the value of education in her children. He remained in school and was presented with the opportunity to learn the machinist trade while in high school and took it. He continued a work-study program at Teledyne Energy Systems as a Machinist Apprentice, where he earned his Maryland State Journeyperson Machinist certificate. Next, he was CNC Programming Manager at Kenley Corporation, where he managed the development and implementation of all manufacturing processes, CNC programming, and fixture design for the aerospace and medical device industry. He led a team of manufacturing specialists in developing reliable manufacturing processes and work instructions to produce high precision parts and complex assemblies.

Compelled to give back to his hometown of Baltimore and his alma mater, Mr. King then served as Training and Technology Manager for Magna International, one of the world's largest OEM automotive parts manufacturers. Magna made a significant infrastructure investment in Mr. King’s childhood community to train second chance individuals in machining. Mr. King sacrificed a high income to show his childhood community how to break the barrier of the middle class. He directed overall planning, development and implementation of their curriculum and instructions. He also directed the training, coaching, mentoring, and evaluating of all instructors.

Mr. King then joined NIMS (National Institute for Metalworking Skills), the nationally-recognized organization responsible for developing national standards and competency-based credentials in manufacturing trades. As Credentialing Director, he led all technical support, data analytics and quality assurance activities for global credentialing. He was soon promoted to Executive Director of NIMS, his current leadership role in which he is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the NIMS operation including administration, programs, and strategic planning.

In October 2017, Mr. King was appointed to the President’s Task Force on Apprenticeship Expansion, formed by the Secretary of Labor “to identify strategies and proposals to promote apprenticeships, especially in sectors where apprenticeship progress is insufficient.
It was in this apprenticeship area of concentration and research in which Mr. King believes sparked his most important contributions to the American manufacturing sector by thoroughly delving into the gaps – which he discovered decades earlier from his own experience – in the traditional apprenticeship system. Through many years of practical experience on the shop floor, in teaching, and speaking with thousands of manufacturers listening to their needs, he was the first to identify and articulate the “complexity gap” that manufacturing employers currently face as they prepare their workforce for the next industrial revolution involving greater automation and data-driven metrics. He developed, designed, and evolved a breakthrough approach to OJT now carried out by the NIMS organization. Mr. King’s training framework, called Smart Training Solutions, includes foundational training Principles and Behaviors. The overall method places emphasis on conforming training to the organization, rather than the organization conforming to a predefined training model. Mr. King’s principles and their related behaviors are outlined in the book the Ultimate Guide to Enhancing Your Training, which empower organizations to do it their way while remaining standardized.

His academic background includes a B.S. degree in Information Technology and M.ED degree in Adult Education from the University of Phoenix as well as his 4-year apprenticeship in Machine Tool Technology at the Community College of Baltimore County.