Omaha, NE

Practice Area:
Management Systems - Organizational Culture Company Profile:
Paxton-Mitchell Company is a 101 year old well established manufacturer of aluminum, bronze, copper and ductile iron castings and bridge inpsection cranes. The company has over 100 employees. The company sells it's products world wide.

Situation:
The Nebraska Manufacturing Extension Partnership performed a needs assessment at the plant. There was a strong need for management training. Many of the supervisors and managers have limited supervisory skills. Several of the management staff are long term employees that have been promoted through the ranks. The initial concerns was about presenting information to them in away that would hold their interest and encourage them to learn something new.

Solution:
The NMEP designed a training modual that filled the needs of management and fit the abilities of the employees. A ten week Supervisory/Management course was set up and instructed by Dr. Tom Martin. Dr. Martin is a Management instructor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Dr. Martin has previous first hand knowledge of foundry work. The training consisted of two hour sessions on Supervision, Communications, Teamwork, Empowerment, Motivation, Goal Setting, Problem Solving, Leadership, Conflict Management and Appraisals. He was able to take his foundry knowledge to make the management class relevent to the participants. NMEP staff maintained oversight on the project and reviewed the progress to see that it met managements expectation. NMEP staff followed up with the company to evaluate the effectiveness of the trainng.

Results:
The lectures were tailored to apply to actual situations in the company and required active participation of the group. As a result, the course was a tremendous success. In fact, some of these longer-term employees were amoung the most energized. An immediate sign a greater teamwork and cooperation was seen.

Testimonial:
"The ten-week Supervisory/Management Training course, instructed by Dr. Martin , was successfully completed arround our busy work schedule. Each of the (ten) subjects proved to be valuable but the classes on Goal Setting, Motivation, and Problem Solving have produced the most results to date.