JJC Sends Potlatch to Mars

When Chris Rice, plant manager at Potlatch, approached JJC to devise a meaningful team building exercise for his new production line group, he had no idea space travel would be on the agenda.

"My primary goal was to create a meaningful team building experience outside of the workplace," Rice said. "The experience needed to include building trust and camaraderie while enhancing decision making and problem solving abilities. Additionally, it needed to be a memorable experience that the employees would talk about for years to come."

What could be more memorable than a mission to Mars? JJC developed a program based on a space mission theme that would meet Potlatch's needs while providing numerous opportunities for their employees to engage in team-building experiences.

Before launch, the teams were given one clue and a map of the college to complete a schoolwide scavenger hunt to collect the things needed for their mission. Dr. Gena Proulx, president of Joliet Junior College, issued the executive order to launch the mission. "I think that it is important for the business community to know that Joliet Junior College is not only responsive, but that it is committed to team building as a strategy to bring about change," Proulx said. "Knowing that we would have Potlatch employees on our campus, I thought that it was important to have the President's Office participate in the teambuilding activity to show support for the strategy being used by its community and economic development arm."

Rice said the interactive exercises demonstrated the four stages of team building well.

"To know the four stages is one thing—the ability to touch, feel and experience the stages was inordinately valuable to Potlatch," he said. "The value and the quality of the training were very good. We achieved our objectives and we definitely got our money worth."

To schedule your company for a teambuilding exercise, contact Bruce Kuzmanich, contract training manager, at (815) 280-1512.

Partners in Value Creation

Running your business profitably requires constant attention and prioritization of your resources. Of all the investments you could make, you want to be sure that the ones you choose provide measurable return.

Return on investment (ROI) is vital to your operations and it is the focus of the partnership between Joliet Junior College and the Chicago Manufacturing Center (CMC). Whether it's workforce skill training, operational excellence improvement, or staying ahead of global competition, you should think about giving priority to the opportunities that create value for your business.

To this end, the CMC recently launched a new program for five to 200 employee manufacturers called STARR Solutions for Manufacturing, and it is your roadmap to improvement. STARR stands for:

STRUCTURED SOLUTION

Your CMC and JJC experts will work with you and your team to discover various ways to improve your operations. After agreeing on your goals, timeframe, and budget, your team of specialists will structure the best solution from the many service offerings available and propose a plan to improve.

TRUSTWORTHY PROFESSIONALS

The team of experts at CMC and JJC are experienced professionals who come from a variety of operational excellence and competitive strategy backgrounds. Through CMC's nationwide network, the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, we know the business of manufacturing from the shop floor to the front office. We bring you the collective experience of working with over 3,000 local manufacturers since 1994.

ACTIONABLE PLANS AND REPORTS

Your business has a unique culture and language for performance metrics. We integrate the plans and reports necessary to improve your operations into a practical implementation plan that works best for your team.

RESULTS

Your expectations for value creation, financial drivers and profit strategies are mapped out up front in the Structured Solution. Baselines are agreed upon and used to measure performance before and after delivery of services. This helps ensure that results are delivered on time and on budget.

RETURN

Working with facts you provide, CMC/JJC will map out the financial impact our services provide as an ROI in terms that are meaningful to you. We conduct a satisfaction survey at completion of service delivery and also one year later to validate the measurable impact of value created and captured by working with us.

Your Structured Solution may include access to public funding that can help leverage your investment to an even greater ROI.

The services available in your STARRSM Solution can include:

• Comprehensive training programs through Joliet Junior College
• Lean principles and implementation
• Quality improvement
• ISO certification
• Strategic planning
• Strategic marketing
• Choices for growth
• Benchmarking

To learn how a STARR Solution for Manufacturing can create measurable impact in your P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow statements, contact Dileep Thatte at (312) 542-0492 or through your Joliet Junior College specialist at (815) 280-1418. After your scheduled appointment, you'll have a better idea how the JJC/ CMC partnership can help your business, and if it makes sense to proceed further.

CMC is part of the nationwide MEP system whose charter is to bring best-in-class manufacturing practices to small-to-medium size businesses. MEP served 16,448 manufacturers last year nationwide, and locally, CMC-JJC reached over 2,000 manufacturers helping them improve profits by more than $41,000,000.

Learn To Speak Spanish Now - Here's Why

Did you know that nearly 400 million people speak Spanish as their first language? Did you know that in the U.S. there are more than 35 million Spanish speakers? The Spanish-speaking population in the U.S. has grown by 60 percent in the past decade, and by 2050, it is expected to represent 50 percent of the total U.S. population. These are remarkable demographic figures and are the foundation of the growing importance of learning Spanish.

Why Spanish? Here are a few good reasons:

• Growing business and employment opportunities
• Spanish is the official language in 21 countries
• Spanish is the third mostwidely spoken language in the world
• Cultural enrichment
• Travel

Spanish-speaking employees enable small and large companies to tap a growing economic base. The purchasing power of U.S. Hispanic households alone is estimated to have increased from $276 billion in 2002 to $630 billion in 2004. The Hispanic purchasing power was estimated to be $30.7 billion for 2004 in the state of New York alone.

For more information, contact Amy Murphy at (815) 280-1418 or e-mail amurphy@jjc.edu.

What is Important to Your Employees?

According to the Society for Human Resource Management's (SHRM) annual job satisfaction survey, employees desire relationships and communications with their supervisors more than they do formal training and career development opportunities.

SHRM asked 600 respondents to rate the importance of the following factors to their job satisfaction: career advancement opportunities within the organization, career development opportunities for learning and professional growth, job-specific training, recognition by management about job performance and relationship with immediate supervisor. The results were:

Rated on a scale of 1 to 5:

• Recognition by management about job performance: 4.27
• Relationship with immediate supervisor: 4.27
• Career development opportunities for learning and professional growth: 4.00
• Job-specific training: 3.93
• Career advancement opportunities within the organization: 3.73

It was noted that all factors became less important the longer a worker had been in their job.

For more information on human resources and supervisory topics, call (815) 280-1423 or e-mail msillar@jjc.edu.