THE SITUATION

Ensuring client satisfaction by delivering on time is, of course, important in any business, and many have adopted a Just-in-time approach to their supply chain to keep costs down. But when it comes to quality and safety in the fresh or frozen food business, scheduling and speed of moving product through the plant and getting it loaded onto refrigerated trucks is critical.

THE CHALLENGE

How does a national food manufacturer efficiently and cost effectively

• Train 2500 employees
• On more than 750 processes
• Related to new, centralized ERP Software systems
• In 4 manufacturing locations across the U.S.
• In both English and Spanish

While continuing to maintain its high standards for product quality across six different brands and comply with all regulations for the food manufacturing industry?

OUR APPROACH

With all our enterprise systems training projects, we always perform careful analysis and planning of the project out in detail. With this client, we engaged in performing a Training Needs Analysis (TNA) as the very first step in our process. The TNA aids in determining the major barriers that our client's organization needs to overcome to successfully implement the ERP training and aids in end-user adoption of the new processes and software system.

As our next step, Jordack's training project manager and the team developer lead worked on creating a Training Strategic Plan. Using the information and data collected in the TNA activity, the consultants were able to define and clarify the vision and mission of the client organization as it pertains to the systems training and how it will plan and manage the entire systems training project.

Our client created a Learning Council that served as a leadership forum for decisions and securing support and approval on all important training decisions. The Training Council consisted of key members of each department, who provided input to how the training content should be developed and delivered to their different departments in the company.

Finally, Jordack's team developed the Training Operational Plan (TOP). This comprehensive document an in-depth outline on how the Infor Software training during implementation would be designed, developed and delivered in the life cycle of the project.

In this project, there was a large amount of uncertainty in terms of the processes and the way the software system would work in the client's business. Jordack Consultants believed that careful planning for the training should begin at the early stages of the project which helps to substantially reduce the risk of end-user not being able to adopt the software system into their daily work.

The Human Factor

Change management is always a factor, but more so, in some cases. A family-owned business since 1964, many of the company's employees had been with them for well over a decade, and they were considered family. However, for many below managerial level:

• English was a second language.
• They had achieved, on average, a 4th-grade reading level.
• They had never used a computer before.
• With the new initiatives, job security became a serious and worrisome concern.

Recognizing these issues and respectful of the corporate culture, our consultants worked with these employees in such a way as to allay these concerns and help bring them through their initial worries about the change.

THE SOLUTION

An integrated training approach was used to maximize employee learning by:

• Oracle's User Productivity Kit (UPK was selected by the client as the optimal technology solution for developing all e-learning courses. Using the UPK tool, we were able to precisely replicate the functionality of the live ERP systems and all the functionality of the key applications, which are used for interactive simulation learning.
• Each role in the company had a training path created for them, that acted as a roadmap to inform the employee which courses were required for their role within the company.
• All e-learning courses were loaded to the client's Learning Management System (LMS), for easy access to all employees. Our LMS consultant provided strategic advice in maximizing the LMS's efficiencies.
• Also, several employees' "super users" have been trained on the use of the UPK development tool, so they can make modifications to the existing courseware developed by Jordack, or develop entirely new courses in the future.
• A special area in the plant was designated to the training of the production and warehousing staff. Simulations were creating for different employee roles, and plant managers performed walk-throughs for different roles, to demonstrate the new processes, new technologies like hand-held scanners, and how to use the software system in their jobs.

OUTCOMES AND BENEFITS

After almost eighteen months of ERP training development, 2500 employees were trained in both a classroom environment and by 750 online e-learning courses.

Employees, depending on the department they worked in, were trained on 14 different Enterprise Systems, from Supply Chain, Finance, Procurement and much more.

All employees now have access now to all training e-learning courses on the LMS to do refresher courses as needed. Also, all new employees will be trained through the e-learning courses when they join the company.

This will provide substantial saving to the company during the on-boarding process of new employees.

By partnering with Jordack Consultants, the client was able to successfully launch all training in advance of the actual systems going live, which saved their company a substantial amount of money in having their employees prepared for the new systems and being able to use the systems in their jobs.