Most Oklahomans have grown up with Bama pies and, probably unknowingly, have eaten hundreds or thousands of cookies and pizzas that were first formed in a Bama dough making facility in Tulsa. Bama Foods, Bama Pies, and Bama Frozen Dough plants in Tulsa supply products daily to many of the most popular restaurants and grocery stores in America. Unseen to those hundreds of thousands of consumers is the army of maintenance technicians and managers that keep the production lines rolling 24 hours day. With a mandate to offer continuous training for Bama’s many production line maintenance technicians, the Bama Technical Training Institute (BTTI) sought out a source of high quality technical training that would enable Bama to increase productivity while keeping costs in line.
	One of Bama Frozen Dough’s maintenance managers, Greg Mays, recommended Central Tech in Drumright where he had completed instruction under Stan Kaltwasser in the Bid Assistance Center. That is why Bama is being recognized as one of Oklahoma's CareerTech Business Champions, according to Dr. Phil Berkenbile, CareerTech state director. “CareerTech Business Champions attribute much of their economic success to the partnerships they have formed with the local technology center programs,” Berkenbile said. Central Tech instructor Stan Kaltwasser, center, assists student/workers in the Bama Foods training facility in Tulsa.   The BTTI, created in November 2000, to offers technical training to Bama maintenance technicians at a low cost and on a flexible schedule to meet the needs of all three Tulsa production centers,” says BTTI manager Dan Anquetil. A key supplier of technical training in the BTTI facility is Central Tech’s Business Assistance Center in Drumright. Central Tech instructor Kaltwasser spends many hours each week at BTTI teaching maintenance technicians the ins and outs of programmable logic controls and human-machine interface technology. Kaltwasser’s class is accredited with the state and Oklahoma State University at Okmulgee, thereby making each technician who successfully completes the training eligible for college credit at OSU Okmulgee. Kaltwasser’s classrooms are located in a renovated “Danceland” building, originally the site of a neighborhood movie theater on Tulsa’s eastside. Bama has constructed a state-of-the-art training center at the site with an adjoining computer lab for instruction in RSView software. The Bama Institute also features a multi-media center capable of making editing video footage in VHS and DVD formats where in-house training videos are planned. Anquetil and Kaltwasser are collaborating on a web-based extension of BTTI that will enable employees to access some of the training from their home-based computers. Kaltwasser describes his role at Bama’s Institute as training troubleshooters. “You can’t effectively troubleshoot a computerized production system unless you know how it works, so we are teaching them how the system works inside and out so that they can become skilled and effective troubleshooters,” Kaltwasser said. The Central Tech instructor’s skills in training others to troubleshoot and maintain computerized production lines are not without recognition on a wider scale. Plaques denoting ten national skills competition winners adorn the Wall of Fame in the lobby of Central Tech’s Drumright campus. Kaltwasser was an instructor for each of the national winners, more than any other single instructor in the school’s history, giving rise to Mays’ confidence in his former mentor. Related Links Bama Companies Central Tech
	Photographs courtesy of Central Tech posted 2/3/2004	Story by:  Larry Lehr Communications & Marketing Central Technology Center Email: llehr@ctechok.org

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