Tailor-Made Training

The Green Cabinet Scene
Saint Paul College and Medallion Cabinetry

Medallion Cabinetry’s Waconia operations manager, Mark Storms, found Saint Paul College on the Internet as he was searching for a way to train his staff on new manufacturing processes. It seemed like a natural fit: Saint Paul College has a carpentry and cabinetmaking program.

“[Medallion] might be able to hire a consultant that knows something about one specific area of the training that they need, but we’re kind of the A to Z,” says Craig Anderson, vice president of administration at Saint Paul College. “We have a lot of our own resources, and this is what we do [in] the customized training division of the college.

Medallion’s proposed training was to focus on the technical aspects of making cabinets using green manufacturing principles. Though the company has been recognized for its green manufacturing technology, it wanted to do more. Several other factors inspired the need for training:

• Medallion is redesigning and enlarging its Waconia plant to make it more efficient.

• A facility in Shakopee is expanding within the next six months to a year, and new staff will need to be trained.

• Medallion wanted its employees to begin working in what organizational development professionals call “natural work teams,” which are work groups that quickly and fluidly react to improve processes.

• The company wanted employees to understand “flow,” or how their jobs fit with and affect the overall production system, instead of focusing on building up inventory for their small part of the process.

Saint Paul College received a Minnesota Job Skills Partnership grant for $345,000, and Medallion will provide an in-kind match. To apply for the grant, Medallion and the college created a curriculum that includes green principles and will be delivered at the manufacturing facility by professors and instructors from the college.

“When we first started talking to them, they came to us with this whole idea of the supervisory training,” says Joy Sommers, account manager for Saint Paul College’s customized training and consulting department. “They feel like they have to change the attitude of the supervisors because it’s been a very traditional plant atmosphere, not unlike other [manufacturing] companies that we work with. If somebody gets promoted because they’re a good carpenter or a good machinist . . . well, to be a good machinist is entirely different than the skills that you need to use to be a supervisor.”

Supervisor-only training will focus on teamwork and leadership. One such workshop, titled “Train the Trainer,” will help participants learn training methods and techniques to effectively train those they supervise.