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First Quality Implements TWI During Pandemic
With the help of: Pennsylvania Manufacturing Extension Partnership
About
First Quality Products is a family-owned business headquartered in Great Neck, New York, that manufactures a variety of products in markets of adult incontinence care, baby care, feminine care, and household care. They supply brands such as Prevail, Cuties, Plenty, Panda and Incognito. Pennsylvania manufacturing facilities include King of Prussia, Lewistown, Lock Haven and McElhattan as well as one in Macon, Georgia.
The Lewistown, Pennsylvania, facility houses automated processes and state-of-the-art machinery and is devoted to the production of adult absorbent hygiene and baby products.
The Challenge
First Quality Products of Lewistown has had productivity impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Turnover has increased and pandemic driven absences due to illness and quarantine has strained production. As a result, there is a demand for more training as the need for cross training and new hire training has increased. These factors have driven a need to develop instruction skills in their trainers as they struggle to enable employees to be productive and error free quickly.
This has been a great experience for the training team. The team has now been exploring more ways to apply their new training skills. They are planning to develop a training-the-trainer program based upon the TWI I method with hopes to expand this approach to effectively train throughout their Lewistown facility and to other locations over the next 1 to 2 years.
MEP's Role
To address this need, IMC, part of the Pennsylvania MEP and the MEP National Network™, delivered training within industry (TWI) job instruction (JI) to the training staff. This JI training developed the skills the trainers needed to deliver training that has employees quickly remembering how to do a job correctly, safely and conscientiously. Due to COVID safety precautions, the course was delivered virtually.
After successful completion of the TWI JI 10-hour course, the training team felt that they had the skills to be good trainers. Previously, while they were subject matter experts, they did not have any training experience. Now they are confident that they are demonstrating the best way to do the job in a way that is consistent and effective. The time it takes to train has been reduced and the employees have more confidence when beginning a new job.