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Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)

Workforce Training has Impact on Safety, Productivity and Culture

With the help of: Ohio Manufacturing Extension Partnership (Ohio MEP)

About

Voyant Beauty is a provider of beauty and personal care products based in the United States. The New Albany, Ohio, facility produces and packages for Bath and Body Works on 13 production lines. New Albany has 225 employees on two shifts at the facility. The company's core competency includes the distribution of beauty and skincare, hand and body soaps, lotions and creams, over-the-counter (OTC) topical drugs, sun care, and hair care products along with product formulation, development, analytical services, and bottle, jar and tube filling capabilities enabling companies in the personal care industry to get quality manufacturing capabilities at competitive prices. 

The Challenge

Voyant Beauty has leveraged a strong connection with non-native English speaking populations to fill its positions. A challenge for Voyant was a communication gap that, at times, resulted in production problems like downtime and increased waste on the line. Adding to the problem was a shortage of qualified maintenance technicians to make sure all the production equipment was being serviced and maintained. 

Through our partnership with Ohio MEP and Columbus State Community College, Voyant Beauty New Albany has been able to provide on-site English as a second language and electrical training. In addition, MEP assisted in outlining a robust, multi-year training program for our maintenance technicians and assist with improving our data collection abilities.

 

In addition to the achievements listed above, our partnership with MEP has helped the New Albany site to be recognized as the 'Most Improved Site of the Year' for 2022 and 'Supplier of the Year' for 2022 by our customer. I cannot emphasize strongly enough how invaluable our partnership with MEP has been in our success and how easy MEP has been to work with on building solutions to our challenges. It is obvious that MEP cares deeply about their mission and the community and is fully invested in our success.

— Tim Allen, Employee & Community Relations Manager

MEP's Role

The Ohio MEP partner in Central Ohio - the MEP at Columbus State, part of the Ohio MEP and the MEP National Network™, worked with Voyant to offer English as a second language (ESL) classes on site at the facility. The program pre-tested students and then placed them in an introductory ESL cohort or an intermediate ESL cohort. The 15-week class met two-times a week and focused on basic communication and key industry language and terms. 

Parallel to ESL training, Voyant Beauty worked with the MEP at Columbus State to provide on site Electrical 1 Certificate training for 15 maintenance technicians, upskilling them for the preventive maintenance and needed repair work.  The cost of this training was completely covered by the Ohio TechCred program and Voyant was able to apply for reimbursement of the cost from the State of Ohio.

Created April 25, 2023