Hydro-Gear: Leadership Development

For over 30 years, Hydro-Gear has provided products and services that meet their customer's rigorous requirements and exceed their expectations. Headquartered in Sullivan, Illinois, and operating manufacturing facilities in multiple states, Hydro-Gear builds hydrostatic drives, transaxles and fully electric drive systems that are sold around the world.

Hydro-Gear prioritized leadership training, but they were concerned it was centered more on "corporate" leadership rather than leadership on the production floor. They recognized that the training often fell flat and was somewhat unrelatable for the manufacturing facilities. In addition, they wanted all of their production staff throughout their multistate footprint trained in a similar manner with the same material.

Hydro-Gear's training team at the Illinois headquarters had worked with IMEC (the Illinois MEP, part of the MEP National Network™) while Hydro-Gear's Kentucky facility was introduced to the Kentucky MEP, also part of the MEP National Network™. Hydro-Gear learned that the NIST MEP National Network encourages MEP Centers across the U.S. to collaborate and find good solutions for manufacturers. With that collaborative spirit in mind, the Kentucky MEP and IMEC aligned their leadership training across Hydro-Gear's manufacturing locations and tailored the curriculum to meet the needs of the production floor. This allowed Hydro-Gear to coordinate their efforts and provide consistent leadership training. It worked so well that when Hydro-Gear built a new facility in Tennessee, the KY-MEP and IMEC added the Tennessee MEP, another part of the MEP National Network™, to the group. Now Hydro-Gear plant employees receive the same MEP delivered training in the Kentucky, Illinois and Tennessee locations.