One-On-One With Valpak's David Fox

Q. What steps have you taken to help transition and train your employees as they adapt to thinking in new ways and working with new equipment and new processes?

As we announced the change to this new environment, we knew we wanted to bring a large portion of our existing workforce from Largo over to this new plant. First, we spent a great deal of time training our employees on improving their skills; teaching English to our non-English speaking employees, since that was critical in the new work environment. Also, in addition to basic skills training for the new environment, we trained them on Lean Manufacturing methodologies, what we call our overall 'operating philosophy', cell manufacturing, preventive maintenance concepts--all the different basics that were not equipmentspecific. We began this training with our existing workforce in the two to three years leading up to the transition.