How tough are you on your operator?
Go out there and rip the handwheels for manual operation off, even take the apron off so there is nothing running in the rack; then tell him he has to learn how to run it as a CNC lathe, none of this farting around betwixt and between.
I doubt very much whether he is older than me or more set in his ways than I was but I switched to CNC totally after a lifetime running manual machines. Sure it exercises the old brain cells a bit and you have to adapt to the machine but once that is done a good old fashioned highly skilled machinist can really make these machines perform.