Small businesses are works in progress, and there’s always room for improvement on a number of fronts.
Many owners and managers tend to look inside the private sector for help, overlooking the wealth of resources on tap through the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system’s customized training services and open-enrollment courses.
MnSCU’s 21 community colleges and 34 technical schools each has its own customized training division, where full-time faculty, part-time staff and a network of independent contractors work together to provide on-site training and teaching to customer-companies.
Companies — which come big and small, including international corporations such as Honeywell and Medtronic, as well as small companies that may employ only a handful of people — sign contracts that span two to three years, and they pay colleges anywhere from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of dollars to train part or all of their employees.
Training topics are as diverse as clients. Many schools have niche areas for which they are well-known: Hennepin Technical College, for example, has developed strong programs in emergency services training and occupational English. But what makes MnSCU’s customized training special is the schools’ ability to listen to an individual company’s needs and goals, and design a specialized, often never-seen-before curriculum based on those criteria.
Ditching the ivory-tower perception of academia, training staff also are constantly hitting the pavement to come up with ideas for new programs.
Center opens
Dakota County Technical College has made some significant changes to its curriculum in the last of couple years to enrich the surrounding southern metro-area business community, and small businesses in particular.
A not-yet-formally-named center (though commonly referred to as the Center for Business & Entrepreneurial Advancement and “the Institute” among Dakota County Technical School rank and file), based in Apple Valley, opened its doors in 2003.
The purpose of the new center is to combine and concentrate all of the college’s existing business curricula and training into one location, but also to stretch the notion of what a technical school can offer to its business students.
Scrapping the old-fashioned “vo-tech” paradigm, the center is offering a more holistic approach, teaching more conceptual concepts hand in hand with the traditional hard, specialized skills. Typical students at the center are older — the average age is between 35 and 40 — and often have lots of world experience, which can be turned into credit toward a degree.
But “the audience is much greater than our student population,” says Christine Pigsley, associate dean who just began her tenure in August. “The center is designed not just to be a service for our students, but also an economic development institution for the community.” She says an upcoming speaker series, hosted by the center, will target existing business owners and leaders, and individuals who have toyed with the idea of becoming entrepreneurs.
Recent offerings have included a business entrepreneur program, run by instructor Bob Voss, also owner of interactive-learning technology company Video Buddy Co. in Bloomington. Because it’s still so new, students now can only earn a certificate in that area, says Voss, but changes in the college’s curriculum will soon allow photography majors, Web design majors, landscaping majors — indeed, students of any major — to incorporate the entrepreneur program into their education.
After all, educators figure, many of these students will end up as independent contractors running their own businesses.
Other additions on the horizon include a new two-year associate of science (AS) business degree, to be offered through the center in fall 2005. That offering allows students to specialize in one of the center’s niche business areas of real estate, management, accounting and entrepreneurship.
Elsewhere, Hennepin Technical College kicked off a newly developed interpersonal skills curriculum, called Service: The Gold Standard, for manufacturing and technology companies in October of this year. Like its Dakota County counterpart, the school will focus on soft skills.
In manufacturing, “the processes are getting lean, the functions are becoming more and more effective, and yet there’s something missing, and that is how people work together,” says Petra Marquart, customized training coordinator at Hennepin Technical College.
“If you go into any manufacturing company, and there are problems, it’s generally not because the line didn’t move along quickly enough. It’s because shipping didn’t give information to a department, or engineers didn’t work effectively with [design], and that’s where the breakdowns take place.”
Wyoming Machine tweaks
Getting manufacturing personnel to work together better is what spurred Lori and Tracy Tapani to pursue customized training for their 60 workers. They felt a little tweaking might be a good idea to enhance employee productivity and overall quality of their workmanship at Wyoming Machine, a precision sheet-metal fabricator based in Stacy, Minnesota, that the two sisters own.
Through a grant writer, they learned about the Minnesota Job Skills Partnership (MJSP), a program that awards state funds to help businesses big and small to train their workforces. The twist on MJSP is that grant money doesn’t go directly to the companies themselves; it goes into a MnSCU community college’s or technical school’s coffers, which then customizes a training program.
Companies are expected to match that dollar amount, and many accomplish that by picking up the tab for class supplies, and by paying workers their regular wages to attend the courses.
Not all companies are underwritten by MJSP, says Dale Sheveland, dean of customized training at Hennepin Technical College. Over two years, his school has been involved with five MJSP grants; the chosen few are usually selected because they’re working on an innovative concept that needs financing, or because they offer higher wages and staff advancement.
While the application process wasn’t too complex for the Tapanis, there were a number of steps involved. The two women had to fill out a 30-page grant proposal, and then made a presentation to MJSP officials about why they should be awarded grant money. Competing for funds against such behemoths as U.S. Bank and Medtronic, they were initially fearful their family-owned, rural manufacturing shop would be, at best, overlooked, or at worst, laughed out of the room.
The sisters thought, “They’re going to be just appalled that some little company would dare come before the wizard and ask for money,” says Traci Tapani. But just the opposite was true: Wyoming Machine, through Pine Technical College, was awarded a $125,000 grant, which was about half of what they had originally asked for. (Tapanis’ grant writer had suggested they ask for more than they needed — a common tactic in finance). “They were so interested in our company and our business that we were just amazed.”
Shortly after getting approval for their grant, two Wyoming Machine customers insisted that the shop get ISO:9000 certification, or they would take their business elsewhere. The news resulted in a quick modification of the Tapanis’ proposal to include such training.
With the grant money, the Tapanis have embarked on a two-year training program with Pine Technical College. It’s not all about books and lectures, they report. In one instance, trainers created a Monopoly-esque board game to illustrate that the company works more efficiently when a department with light work pitches in to help out a backlogged department. The focus of that particular course was cycle-time reduction.
To the point
Another course focuses on mathematical measuring, where attendees learn geometry and practice with various manufacturing measuring tools. The courses are directed mainly at younger workers, who tend to lack or have weaknesses in this skill set.
Wyoming Machine’s ISO:9000 audit is scheduled for December 1, 2004. Meanwhile, training continues.
“We’ve been able to do more progressive stuff,” says Traci Tapani. “If we would not have had access to that money, and the quality of people that come in here to work with us and do training, we might still be in the dark ages of manufacturing and be thinking about closing up our facility and moving on.”
Dale Sheveland, Petra Marquart, Hennepin Techical College: 763.550.7159; dale.sheveland@hennepintech.edu, petra.marquart@htc.mnscu.edu; www.hennepintech.edu. Christine Pigsley, Bob Voss, Dakota County Technical College: 952.997.2574; christine.pigsley@dctc.mnscu.edu, bob.voss@dctc.mnscu.edu; www.dctc.mnscu.edu. Lori Tapani, Traci Tapani, Wyoming Machine: 651.462.4156; ltapani@wyomingmachine.com, ttapani@wyomingmachine.com; www.wyomingmachine.com
