Eaglestone University: Better Customer Value through Knowledge

Every single worker in the Eaglestone plant is going back to school. This new training program has been designed to make our personnel the most highly efficient work force in the industry and to provide our customers with the very best quality products and service. Our instructors are the most highly trained professionals we could find in the manufacturing of food processing and packaging systems – our own employees.

Through years of experience, each of our workers has learned different ways of doing their job easier, better and faster. People standing right next to each other use unique techniques and methods that are invisible to their co-workers, but are priceless in terms of adding value to the process. The problem is — they’re all so busy getting the job done and making production goals that they don’t have time to ask each other how they approach a task, even if they think about it in the first place. That’s the idea behind Eaglestone University. We are giving our employees the time and place to ask questions and further their education in their very own fields and in the fields of those they work side-by-side with every day.

Why are we doing this?

If each Eaglestone employee learns more about every aspect of our operations and their part in it, they go from being a good employee to a great employee. Great employees make better products. Better products make satisfied customers.

When are we going to do this?

We’ve already started. Management employees are meeting for a training session every Monday. The Finishing Department has completed one session with another one planned. Our goal is take what we’ve learned from these first groups and fine tune the process for the next department. We want to find the best way to learn from each other, then expand the process to the entire plant.

How are we going to do this?

This isn’t going to be like high school shop class. The process will be more like a Monday morning game recap–look at the performance, break it down, and figure out how to make it better – all within a fun, on-the-job learning environment.

We will select a group of employees to come up with the game plan for each department, and will then provide the team in that department one hour per week for four weeks to meet and discuss the top topics. Once the ideas begin to fly, everyone will find that there is a lot of solid, practical knowledge they can all learn from each other. Ideas that they can walk right out and put to use on the job.

What’s next?

Our next step will be to cross-train employees between departments—getting to know what is involved before and after each step in the complete fabrication process. Having a better understanding of what other departments are doing and why will keep our manufacturing process running more efficiently and will ultimately provide our employees a better respect for the rest of the team.

In future sessions, we intend to focus on and discuss new methods, ideas and equipment and eventually will open Eaglestone U to our customers to educate them on our equipment and best practices in selecting the right features for their unique needs.

The bottom line

We want Eaglestone to continue to be a leader in providing conveyor systems and other food production solutions for the food processing and packaging industry. As the expert, we recognize that we need to never stop learning and continually educate ourselves. By turning to each other to ensure that our methods and technology are second-to-none, Eaglestone will maintain a highly motivated, knowledgeable and productive work force, thus offering our customers a superior level of product, customer support and overall confidence in Eaglestone as a business partner.