Tom Andel

Grow your own workforce

The Material Handling Industry of America  will propagate materials handling education across the country to ensure the availability of a skilled, plentiful labor pool.

Readers of this magazine may not care that MHIA recently received an outstanding business partnership award from the Rock Hill, SC School District for its service in promoting material handling & logistics educational programming in high schools and technical schools.

Modern readers do stand to benefit from this prize, however.

It starts with the establishment of the Don Frazier Warehousing Training Program. Named for Don Frazier (founder of Frazier Industrial Company), this new program will launch in the 2008-2009 academic year with an entry-level educational program for 93 high school students in Rock Hill. They’ll learn in a 4,000 square foot working warehouse and training center.

Allan Howie, MHIA’s Director of Continuing Education and Professional Development, has visions of replicating this program across the country and he's starting by convincing employers this program is as much for them as it is for students.

I asked Mr. Howie to share his plans for getting that message across. Here’s our Q&A.

Q: The conventional wisdom is the next generation of workers won’t be interested in working in a DC or warehouse. How will you change that thinking?

A: It starts with awareness. The perception is that all you do in a warehouse is stack boxes on a pallet and drive a forklift. The director of the Rock Hill program at the Applied Technology Center calls it the WOW factor. The first thing we will accomplish is to show students the technology. Materials handling is more automated than anyone in the lay population can imagine.

Q: Will students have hands-on access to the technology?

A: This is a working warehouse that will be replicated across the country. Many schools and communities have buildings that can easily be retrofitted. Students will perform services for their school systems or the city or county government. We have one serving nine school districts. Students take orders, produce bills of lading and pick sheets, package, load trucks, route and receive goods coming back from the schools and re-inventory them.

Q: Will the materials handling equipment be donated by the MH industry?

A: Yes, that’s happening now. Students are using equipment that our member companies produce. Some equipment will need to be purchased but we have funding through our Material Handling Education Foundation to help school systems along. Some are starting from scratch and others have programs that need to be brought up to date. We want everybody across the country learning on the same equipment. That makes the training transportable.

Q: Will this program lead to internships?

A: That’s usually the senior year, depending on the length of the program. It will vary from school system to school system. It will help students decide if this is a career they really want. It will also give the employer a chance to screen potential employees because they’re watching and working with this young person on a daily or weekly basis and can see their work ethic. They’ll make better hires. We’ll also do pre-employment training for specific companies.

Q: How can our readers get involved?

A: We are providing a skilled workforce where the demand exists. We don’t know every region that needs these folks. We want to hear from them. We have a model for people to follow, using their community colleges and high schools. Ideally we’ll do this everywhere you have a convergence of Interstate systems.

Q: What’s the urgency?

A: Companies will soon need to grow their own talent. We’re trying to make it so students don’t have to travel hundreds of miles and enroll in programs to learn this. We’re bringing it to them using existing school systems and community colleges. But it starts with a team consisting of representative from companies in need of a good labor pool. The team should also include someone from the community’s economic development organization that is trying to attract industry with a skilled workforce. Third should be school system decision makers. Fourth can be MHIA. Just call me at 704-676-1190.

Posted by Tom Andel on August 7, 2008 | Comments (1)