Powering Up Southern Oregon’s Manufacturing Sector
Rogue Valley manufacturing businesses have recently benefitted from a successful private/public training partnership with Rogue Community College, and the Rogue Valley Workforce Development Council, through its “PowerUp” initiative.
The Rogue Valley Workforce Development Council (RVWDC) invested $53,000 from its federal Employer Workforce Training Funds to sponsor five manufacturing-based training courses brokered through Rogue Community College (RCC). Courses offerings included: Hydraulics, Ergonomics in Manufacturing Processes, Metallurgy, Coating and Drying, and Flexible Substrate Processes. The RVWDC PowerUp initiative invests in training based on extensive dialogues with leading traded-sector employers regarding the workforce skills they need to successfully compete in the global economy. In Southern Oregon, private businesses, economic development and public workforce development partners are all joined at the hip – and this unified partnership and investment strategy has resulted in this successful training project.
The RVWDC heard from area manufacturing businesses that they were limiting their engineering and operations staff access to important technical training because the only location for certain training courses was out of state, and, in some cases, on the East Coast. The $53,000 training grant allowed RCC to bring in national technical experts to train to a contingent of local manufacturing businesses. The project was guided by Artha Nafie, Quality Leader/Regulatory Associate for Carestream Health, Inc., one of the regions largest manufacturing employers. Artha is also an RVWDC member and a member of the Oregon Workforce Investment Board’s newly forming Manufacturing Subcommittee.
RCC visited local businesses to understand specific skill sets needed for instruction content. The partners then used their local professional network with manufacturing business leaders to promote the training opportunities. On relatively short notice, the five trainings served employees from 8 significant manufacturing businesses in the Rogue Valley, including Carestream Health, Boise Cascade, Sabroso Company, Eaton Hydraulics, Harry and David, Erickson Air Crane, Pacific Coast Transformer, and Hewlett Packard from Corvallis.
120 employees spent 2,561 hours in training in the five courses offered from late April through the end of June. The high participation rate was a result of Rogue Community College’s flexible course scheduling beginning at 6 a.m. so that Carestream Health employees could rotate into the classes during the day.
According to Artha Nafie, “This training clearly has expanded our workforce skill sets, resulting in particular new skill sets that will help us gain new business that we must currently turn away. Workers saw the training as a real privilege for personal development, with a boost to our employee morale that we frankly had not anticipated. This training has inspired employees to new and innovative approaches to problem solving on the shop floor and in developing ideas never tried before. It has given employees an opportunity to network and share information from industry neighbors with whom they attended courses. Rogue Community College Customized Training staff guided us through every step – from developing the curriculum, which was exactly what our employees needed, to instructor selection and flawless execution.”
The local Carestream Health plant received national recognition for the training from its national corporate offices in Rochester, New York. Further downstream return on this training investment is anticipated in the form of new product development, new sales, increased efficiencies/productivity and other similar bottom line business benefits.