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A partnership between Oklahoma City's Nestle Purina
Pet Care Products (formerly Ralston Purina) plant and Francis
Tuttle, one of Oklahoma's 29 technology centers, has earned the
Oklahoma City plant national recognition throughout the Nestle
Purina Company.
Project REAL (Ralston Enhanced
Associate Learning), developed through a partnership with Francis
Tuttle Technology Center, assesses associate skills and provides
the necessary training for those skills, according to Jim Kerr,
the plant's human resources manager.
"Project REAL is now being used in our plants throughout
the company for improving production," Kerr said. "Nestle'
Purina plants in other states have studied the Oklahoma plant's
program and are modeling their own training based on the one
developed by Francis Tuttle."
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 "Because of
the training and a new pre-hiring assessment program implemented
with Francis Tuttle's help, we have seen a 75 percent reduction
in the amount of time it takes new hires to fully develop the
specific skills they need for maintenance jobs," Kerr said.
That's why Nestle' Purina has been recognized as a
CareerTech Business Champion.
CareerTech Business Champions are those businesses that
attribute much of their economic success to the partnerships
they have formed with the local technology center or high school
CareerTech programs.
Nestle' Purina is an international pet food manufacturer with
25 plants worldwide. The Oklahoma City plant has partnered in
training with Francis Tuttle since. Every year, the plant's 220
employees produce 350,000 tons of pet food. Twenty-three of those
employees are maintenance technicians who keep the plant running.
All have been trained at Francis Tuttle's Bruce Gray Campus.
Historically, the plant used traditional tuition reimbursement
strategies with maintenance associates to help them keep up with
changes in equipment. However, only one-third of those associates
actually participated in the program.
As the highly automated manufacturing plant began to experience
major technological advances in the equipment they were using,
maintenance associates found that it was difficult to keep up.
 Francis Tuttle's
Business and Industry Services team was contacted to work with
Kerr to provide a needs assessment and to develop customized
training specifically for their maintenance employees.
"We contracted with Francis Tuttle for an on-site technical
trainer for our maintenance courses because we realized that
we were going to have to evolve quickly to stay competitive,"
Kerr said. "We essentially created a school within our manufacturing
environment where we can gather data about the new equipment,
design the curriculum and teach equipment-specific courses without
ever leaving our facility."
Training is also provided for the production associates so that
they can help diagnose problems with equipment and better communicate
the problems to the maintenance groups.
The Oklahoma plant is now in the process of expanding its training
and associate development programs for other job groups within
the organization.
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