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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Industrial training, asset management, maintenance, reliability, customized training, job task analysis, skills gap, training instructors, apprenticeship program, vocational school, curriculum development, online assessment, refresher courses, next generation, SMRP conference.

00:03

Scott, welcome to the Industrial Talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hardback, grab your work boots and let's go all

00:22

right, once again. Welcome to Industrial Talk. Thank you very much for joining the number one industrial related podcast that celebrates you and it's it's so large, it's larger than the universe that celebrates you, industry professionals all around the world. You're bold, brave, you dare greatly, you innovate, you collaborate, you solve problems each and every day. That's why we celebrate you on Industrial Talk, I got people running around that I know, and I'm waving at them. All right, we're here broadcasting on site. SMRP, Fort Worth Texas is the location, and it is, again, collection of incredible professionals all focused on solving your challenges. And if you're in the world of asset management, reliability or maintenance, or anything in between, you need to put, and you're not here, you need to put this on your calendar for next year, because it is a barn burner and it is a great profession to be involved in. All right, we have two, two individuals, and you're gonna have to clear because I don't have it on my notes here. I don't, I don't. We have Ashley and Darin, and they are with

01:23

Multi-Skill training services. Say that again, Multi-Skill training

01:27

services, let's get cracking.

01:31

I'm so glad you get you guys win the booth conference contest here. Oh, thank you. Yeah, you guys wheeled it in. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. This is cool. And you know what attracted me to it was the fact that it's about training,

01:44

yes, how long you guys been in business? Little over 30 years.

01:48

See how I just threw a question out there. Yeah, it's okay, and you just rolled right into it. Thank you, Ashley, yeah, about

01:56

how many years? A little over 30, really? Absolutely, yeah, wow.

02:05

Okay, I'm going, I've already started with my series of questions, Ashley, give us a little background on who you

02:11

are. Okay. VPS else at Multi-Skilled training services, been with the company about 12 years, so very passionate in helping my clients find the right training program for them.

02:25

Wow. Before that, what did you do? I

02:27

was actually in packaging cells.

02:30

No kidding. Yeah, Shut the front door. There's a lot of engineering on that.

02:34

Well, absolutely, I enjoy the client portion of it more than the engineering.

02:39

But, but, yeah, all right, Darin,

02:42

what's your 411 I'm a senior project engineer for the company, so my job is to make sure we align what we provide with the customers needs. So if it's skills training, we talk through how we deliver that, what ROIs it delivers. It may be machinery specific operator training, where we train their operators the proper way to operate a machine, all the way into world class maintenance, which we call maintenance foundations. My background, I was an engineer for Dean Foods for 20 some years, and I've been with Multi-Skilled training for

03:12

17 years now. 17. You started when you were what?

03:16

15, yeah, 15, not even out of high school. Yeah.

03:20

Barely started shaving. Yeah.

03:23

Wow, that's, that's pretty cool. Now let's you Ashley, the genesis of this, or, I mean, well, I'll just lay it out. There we are. It should be a real good time for you guys, because we need training. We don't have enough training. And to give you a little background, I remember this. I was a journeyman lineman transmission. Southern California is climbing, but I had to go through an apprenticeship program four years, you know, of being yelled at and doing things that made me scared and all that good stuff. But that's the way that's in that ensures knowledge, right? What are we doing? How does your organization sort of ensure that people are are getting the information and the training they need to be successful in industry? Sure.

04:15

So one of the things that we do, a little bit different than other customers or other organizations out there is that we really want to take the time that they have and customize that training to directly what they need. So we will actually go into a facility we do what's called a job task analysis. We're identifying what skills you need them to have your technicians, what do they need to know

04:36

industry specific, or just

04:39

honestly, we started out plant specific, but we started out very focused in the food and beverage industry, but the skills trades were across all industries now,

04:51

yeah, so back to do you Darin, so you. Are there industries that you do not focus on?

05:03

I don't think not so far, because our training is customized to each customer.

05:09

How do you do that? How do you customize every interaction? So

05:14

what do we ask a technician to do? So is electrical? Once you dial into electrical, what responsibilities? Is it power? Is it controls? Is it instrumentation? Is it VLC? So we dial into what those needs are at each plant. So whether it's a chemical plant, an automotive plant, a food plant, it doesn't matter, because it's the same components being used. It's just how they're put together in the operation of that plant.

05:39

So you customize each engagement,

05:42

yeah, down to the component level. So if you tell us we're going to work three phase motors, then you'll have a session on three phase motors. We're troubleshooting PID control loops. You're going to have a session on that built into another skill area. It's troubleshooting PLCs, but we don't want to do programming. We'll customize the training to match that need.

05:58

Okay, I have a question for you, not yet. Ashley, yeah, here's the deal. How does, how do you get engaged? Does a company say I have a gap here? How did, how do they know that they need to engage your solutions or your services?

06:13

Honestly, it's pretty obvious in today's time and age that there's a lot of skills gaps out there, especially within your industrial training. So they just come to us and they say, We have a ton of, I guess, success at trade shows, but they come to us, they say, Hey, we need training. So we just come in and we start identifying what skills they need, and then we provide a custom assessment, so we test those technicians before they ever go into the training. We want to see who needs to go into what.

06:48

There's a lot of work. Yeah, I my little brain, and I was going to have a question for you, Darin. And of course, ah, there. I got it. I drew upon it in my head, thank goodness. How does your How does your organization pull in the instructors that you feel comfortable to be able to deliver this trend?

07:14

It's a very good question. Thank you very much. Yeah, we advertise continuously looking for instructors because of the criteria we require for our instructors. So first of all, we're all retired electrical or mechanical engineers. We have to have at least 25 years of experience in manufacturing. Most of us are retired maintenance managers. And then once they are joined into our company, they go out with a training instructor to learn how to teach. We call it Train the Trainer. So they go out and train with an existing instructor, see how we deliver the information, then they go out the next time and alternate with that instructor, showing that they can do that training before they're allowed to become a full time instructor for us and go out on their own. It's a two month, three month onboarding process for each new instructor.

08:00

Yeah, the math, here's the math. You know it as these, you know, silver tsunami, they're rolling out. They impact your business. Do they really want to be do they want to be on the golf course, or do they want to be able to be a part of the solution? Right? I want them to be a part of the solution. But eventually, you know, you have to be diligent about constantly filling those roles. Yes,

08:30

we are constantly hiring. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. We have a cool model as well, where it's an independent contractor model, so most of our instructors, they stay retired. They just pick up the weeks that they actually want to go out and do the instruction. And a lot of times that has to do, since we service all of the US, they will pick places or different ideas, different things that they want to go back and see.

08:56

Okay, okay. I got another great question. Okay, yeah, when you said the US, do you have a traveling road show, or do you have, how do you how do you do that?

09:06

Darin, so we're based down in Kentucky. So anything 10 hours from Kentucky, we load up and go with the instructor. So basically Nebraska to Texas, to Florida and Pennsylvania, New York, we can travel to from where we're based in Kentucky. Outside of that, we pack up the equipment and ship it and then fly the instructor in to teach the classes. Wow.

09:28

And that instruct you just can't do it overnight.

09:32

Well, we've been doing this. That's actually said for 30 years. Some of our instructors have been around that

09:38

long, yeah, but, but again, these this training, and you're, let's say I'm in California. Now I'm not in Kentucky. I ship everything over there, and it takes time to properly train and assess, Ashley, do they? Do you come back and. Assess, sometimes stickiness of knowledge

10:03

Absolutely. So we provide an online assessment tool as well. So not always do you have to have us come back on site to do the assessment, but they can go back through. We also provide what's called skill confirmations. So after the course, we are going to empower those supervisors or the management staff to take those skills that they learned in the course for those individuals and then apply them on the plant floor at the end of the day, they've got to be able to apply it on the plant floor for it to make any sense for the customer to be paying for that

10:31

service. Darin, do they do? They ever come back and say, Hey, I need a refresher course?

10:36

Absolutely, if they don't incorporate those skills into the technicians daily life. Then just like anything else, you don't use it, you lose it. Yeah, so we've had customers who we've trained up their staff ensured when they left the class they have that knowledge, but then didn't use those skills in the plant. Six months of years later, we've come back done refresher training.

10:56

Okay, here's here is a topic that I am passionate about. Here's the reality that exists in the market. So we have, I believe, a renaissance. There is just a lot of money flowing into opportunities to be able to expand and to scale your project, whatever it might be, might be manufacturing, whatever process. It doesn't matter. There's, there is a focus on that. And all I can think of is like, that's great, but this is a human, human equation, right? You still need people. You can only automate so much, and you still need people when you automate, right? It doesn't, it doesn't eliminate that. What does your organization do? If it does to inspire that next generation to come on into the trades. What do you guys are doing? And I see, I just throw it out there. I'll let you guys wrestle with that.

11:49

No, absolutely. So I'll let you add in as well. But I think that we kind of give a roadmap for these young individuals to be coming in into learning those skills, because at the end of the day, we don't have those. You're not being taught that from the ground up like you used to be, right? No, our newer generations, we just don't have those skills. So we kind of give the companies a roadmap to bring somebody in with very little knowledge and be able to take them through anything as basic as maintenance fundamentals and build them all the way through concepts or controls or PLC welding, hydraulics, whatever that may be.

12:23

Our company founder was a vocational school instructor.

12:27

See, I was I taught at a college vocation. I taught

12:32

at college, and he was frustrated because he came for maintenance. He was a maintenance technician for Briggs and Stratton. Went back to school, got his education, but he was frustrated because the skills they were delivering the vocational school weren't the skills needed in the plants. That's how this company started when it did

12:48

see, I that's that's a whole nother

12:52

conversation, because I agree, does our existing educational model? Is it nimble enough right to respond to the demands of today's needs. And I'm here to say or, and I don't get mad at me, but I think it's not we. There's so much heavy lifting that has to get done for us to be successful,

13:16

yeah? And it's understanding the needs of the plant, yeah? I mean, that's where it comes from. So the customers are always telling us what skills they need, and because of our testing, we know what skills they have, so we're front line on this need of training in the country.

13:33

See, how does your organization, because it doesn't, because it's been around for many years, there have been changes. Just change period. And now I feel like it's accelerating. That change is accelerating at a rapid pace. How do you guys stay current? You'll go ahead, or you want. Oh, there it is. I just lofted it out. You go ahead.

14:03

Oh, no, Darin. So we evolve constantly. So the training equipment that's here is not the training equipment that would have been here two years ago. No, we're constantly evolving our training. We're constantly rewriting our curriculum. We re engineer our boards, we redo our hands on exercises to meet the components that we see at the plants. So what we teach is what they need and is what they buy, changes. What we have to teach changes. So we have a group of people who constantly write new curriculum. Yes, in all of our areas,

14:34

that's a tiger by its tail. Come on. Yeah.

14:39

We're busy all the time. With that, our instructors come back with information of needs that they saw in the class. So we're constantly evolving this, and it's just never changed in the history of the company. We just keep changing it to what the needs are the customer.

14:53

Do you guys have an apprenticeship program?

14:56

I wouldn't say a direct apprenticeship program. We work with our customer. Whenever they want to create our apprenticeship program, but into our organization, we really need those base skills that they, I guess, had over many years of working on the plant floor before they come into our organization.

15:14

Yeah, there's so much you guys are right in the thick of it. I just do you guys have a podcast. I can't do all this heavy lifting myself. I mean, you guys have got to consider that.

15:34

Honestly, it's

15:39

a great idea. You should be carrying the flag of next generation knowledge. Let's caught. Let's have a conversation after the fact. That's great stuff.

15:50

Absolutely, all right,

15:53

we're gonna wrap it up. Okay, Ashley, how do people get a hold of you? If they're saying, I want to know more,

15:59

absolutely, you can go to our website, industrial maintenance training.com, or you can contact me directly. Ashley Donahue on LinkedIn.

16:07

That's C right there, Darin, it's the LinkedIn contact that I want to hear. And then you Darin, how do people get a hold of you?

16:16

Same way. That's Darin Gray from camp at mst services.net, or on

16:19

17:02

You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

17:11