PLANNING FOR NEXT MILLENNIUM: EMPLOYEE TRAINING WILL BECOME MORE CRITICAL FOR BUSINESS, INDUSTRY

As business and industry look to the new millennium, thoughts of cybermarketing and trade shows come into focus.

More than 40 million people travel the thousands and thousands of World Wide Networks. The number of users grow by 20 percent a month, and as many as 300 new web sites are developed daily, leading to the premise that companies need to get on the Internet "because everyone else is."

Trade shows offer another "utopia" of marketing for retail and industry alike. Thousands of people attend various shows a year that feature product exhibits of small (10-under employees) to large (500-over employees).

Businesses are seeking higher skilled employees. Despite all the talk about downsizing, many of America's largest companies added to their payrolls last year.

Employees throughout the nation, including the immediate Cape Girardeau area, have embarked on employee-training programs to provide their own skilled labor force.

More than a dozen employers in the Cape Girardeau area are involved in the Southeast Missouri Regional Training Group, a project designed to provide more skilled workers.

Member companies in the group include some of the area's largest employers, including Procter & Gamble Paper Products, Lone Star Industries, Dana Corp., M&W Packaging and Lee-Rowan Co.

Other members in the group include K&K Electric, Gregory Construction, Golden Cat, Biokyowa, SEMO Carpenters Union and Foamex, and most recently, Bloomsdale Excavating, headquartered at Bloomsdale, with an office in Cape Girardeau.

The Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce is a supporter of the group, and recently became an associate member.

A new maintenance technology degree will soon become available from the program.

"We hope to have everything in place to provide training for the Associate of Applied Science in Industrial Maintenance Technology degree by this fall," said Pat Hagan, head of training at Dana Corp. and director of the new training group.

"We have more than 150 employees in training now," said Hagan. "We have the curriculum. We have to add a few finishing touches to the program."

The training group was founded more than two years ago and involves the use of training facilities at (MAC), Southeast Missouri State the Cape Girardeau Vo-Tech School.

The group has focused on maintenance training, identifying the requirements of maintenance personnel, said Gil Kennon, MAC customized training director. "We have developed a maintenance technician curriculum and training machines to address the needs that have been identified."

The new training equipment, said Hagan, allows instructors to simulate a number of activities necessary in various manufacturing operations. The new trainer can be used to illustrate equipment effectiveness, maintenance and troubleshooting skills.

Training equipment also includes magnetic starters, various switches, a couple of electrical motors, a small air-compressor, chain puller, ball bearings and other items."

The regional group represents a pool of more than 4,000 trainees who have been or will be in the process of being better-trained for their positions.

"This is a great program," said John Mehner, chamber president. "It trains employees for their jobs and helps keep existing industries going. That's one of our top priorities."

"The program offers an opportunity for our people to work with professional technicians from other companies," said Larry Stahlman, a spokesman from Procter & Gamble. With electrical and mechanical training, the program has built a program that meets a lot of adult training techniques, added Stahlman.

P&G was one of the initial members of the group and provided input into the new program.

"It's certainly a program long needed," said Dave Blanchard, manager of the Dana plant. "When I first arrived here, one of the things missing was maintenance skills training. What we found, and what a number of other industries have found, is that we had to grow our own program."