Kenosha-based multifacturing company Xten Industries LLC has partnered with Kenosha-based Gateway Technical College to offer a scholarship and an internal training program.
The partnership, partially funded with a $37,000 workforce advancement training grant from the Wisconsin Technical College System, is part of the company’s goal to forge relationships with area educational institutions, said Xten CEO Matt Davidson.
“We’ve really revamped how we’re going to develop and look for talent in the future,” Davidson said.
Xten’s recent acquisition of Paramount Plastics in Lockport, Ill. has added a second location to the company. It is also in the process of moving to 24/7 production, which has stretched shop floor supervisory capacity and added to employees’ workload.
“From June of last year to June of this year, the company will grow by about 150 percent,” Davidson said. “We have never been in the position of growing this rapidly before, and so our systems for bringing people on and making them productive immediately were simply not up to task.”
As a result, Xten will implement a comprehensive internal orientation and training program. Instructors from Gateway will come to Xten to train all manufacturing floor employees in LEAN practices to increase efficiency in the manufacturing process.
The training will help Xten’s existing employees, but the company is still struggling to fill its open positions for technical skilled employees, which has delayed the process of moving to 24/7 production for the last three months.
Xten has also contributed funding for a new manufacturing lab at Gateway and $10,000 for an endowed scholarship at the technical college, with the aim of promoting the field of manufacturing and addressing the problem of finding skilled labor.
The grant will fund an annual scholarship of $500 for continuing students who have completed at least 12 credits and are in a manufacturing field, said Gateway Technical College Foundation executive director Jennifer Charpentier.
“We really appreciate when community businesses are working to keep education affordable for our students,” Charpentier said. “It speaks really well of the company that they’re interested in encouraging people to become employees of manufacturing.”
