Do you really need that experienced of a machinist to run the job right? I know for some jobs you do but just wondering if that's the case with a lot of your jobs. Most shops I've worked in operate with just a couple programmers. Those guys just write programs all day, and like usually they'll plan the job, decide which order the ops go in, etc. Then there's a handful of setup guys. They talk with the programmer about the specifics of the job and then set it up. Then we have button pushers who actually run the job. It's not tooooo hard to find someone who can run a job and check it and not ship bad parts if that's all they're doing. And then depending on the shop most have fairly capable operators who can at least read a print and do wear offsets and change inserts. But I've also worked in shops with pure button pushers. Setup guy tells them this needs to measure this, this needs to measure this, etc, spells out the whole op for them. If the button pusher gets an out of tolerance dimension they just hit optional stop and call a setup guy to fix it.

I know some parts you don't want some idiot running and some need to be constantly checked on and watched and all that. But yeah a lot of parts you just need a guy to swap the parts out.