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Building Georgia's Workforce in Food-related Industries
From processing raw ingredients to pulling finished products from the oven, food-related industries face unique challenges, and your workforce needs thorough training to meet them effectively.
Quick Start has the experience and expertise to design and deliver the strategic workforce training solutions that target your specific processes as well as keep your team up-to-date on food safety standards — HACCP principles, FDA and USDA regulations, and current Good Manufacturing Practices.
Whether yours is a startup creating new jobs in Georgia or an existing business investing in new technology to stay competitive in a rapidly changing economy, Quick Start provides comprehensive, customized workforce training to meet your specific needs.
You want a workforce with the right combination of technical skills, professional ethics and commitment to continuous improvement if you are to succeed in the 21st century advanced manufacturing environment. And Georgia Quick Start is dedicated to ensuring your success.
Quick Start has extensive experience developing customized training for processing and manufacturing a wide range of food and food-related products.
We have developed state-of-the-art training in the required skill sets for food manufacturing — blending and mixing, pasteurization, sampling and testing, changeover procedures, chilling, cooking, breading, frying, and baking — in addition to core skills in areas such as food safety, weights and measures, good manufacturing practices, and lift vehicle operations.
Quick Start’s training professionals are experts at analyzing your needs, assessing your job types, and delivering thoroughly customized, job-specific training that targets your processes and technology.
Select the best employees. Prepare them with the exact skills you need for your operation. Grow, compete and thrive through ongoing, continuous improvement.
Quick Start is your partner for success in food production.
Customized Training for Food-related Industries
Your customized training plan will be developed through a fully integrated partnership with
Quick Start’s training professionals.
Below is just a sample of some of the training we have provided for food manufacturers and processors in Georgia.
Pre-employment assessment
and selection
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Company overview
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Task simulations
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Behavioral interviewing
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Core skills and safety
Core skills training
Core skills training equips your workforce with the foundation of skills and knowledge to prepare them for your unique operations. These can include:
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Food safety and quality training, including:
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Ingredient testing
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Pasteurization
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Sanitation procedures
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Metal detector fundamentals
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Sampling and testing
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HACCP principles
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Distribution training, including:
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Packaging
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Palletizing
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Shipping
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Receiving
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Stocking
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Powered lift vehicle operation
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Job-specific Training
Quick Start’s customized job-specific training is designed around your operation and equipment, to make sure your employees understand their jobs and their positions in the larger whole.
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Processing and cooking training, including:
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Blending
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Filling
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Thawing
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Forming
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Baking theory and chemistry
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Measuring
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Breading
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Chill room
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Deboning
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Scale operations
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General advanced
manufacturing training
Your operations require incorporating the latest technological innovations in the industry. Quick Start can provide customized training in any of the following areas:
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Automation training, including:
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Control theory
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Integrated systems
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Variable frequency drives (VFD)
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Plant networks
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Programmable logic controllers (PLC)
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Troubleshooting
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Robotics training, including:
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Theory and modes of operation
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Control program execution
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Safety and ANSI/RSI standards
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Troubleshooting and maintenance
Leadership development
for operational supervisors
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High-performance leadership
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Interviewing for results
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The motivated workplace
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Managing change
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Communication skills for leaders
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Coaching in action
Productivity enhancement and professional development
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5S/Visual Factory
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Quality and lean systems
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Cross-cultural communications
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Conflict resolution
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Six Sigma
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Introduction to teams
King's Hawaiian
From the beginning in 2010 when King’s Hawaiian announced it would build a facility in Oakwood, Ga., Quick Start was one of the main ingredients.
“Quick Start was a big part of the incentives,” says John Linehan, King’s Hawaiian executive vice president for strategy and business development. “We didn’t realize how big up front. But it turned out to be bigger and richer than we expected.”
Quick Start’s training for King’s Hawaiian has touched almost every aspect of the Oakwood operation. During the team-building process, Quick Start developed mock packaging lines for applicants, allowing company experts to observe their collaboration skills in action — essential for ensuring each new hire would be a good fit for the company’s culture.
Food companies have unique requirements designed to keep their products safe and healthy. That’s why employees in this industry have to go beyond usual plant-safety principles, learning FDA requirements, Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs), and other food-safety practices.
According to King’s Hawaiian CEO Mark Taira, the Quick Start training in these areas was also successful. “From the lockout/tagout training through the new standard operating procedures, it’s just fantastic,” he says. “Quick Start provides true value. Bringing people in already trained on our GMPs really helps our training curve.”
Training materials developed by Quick Start for King’s Hawaiian included videos, job aids, classroom materials, and hands-on exercises. Also, because it’s impossible for employees to watch what’s happening inside a closed baking oven or proofing box, Quick Start’s creative services team created technical drawings of the equipment with sections cut out in order to illustrate what’s happening inside.
“The job-specific training that went from general to specific and was customized to our processes — even workflow diagrams — really stood out."
John Linehan
EVP for Strategy and Business Development
King's Hawaiian
In fact, Quick Start’s training for the Oakwood team helped the facility to perform even better than company executives expected. “We thought all of the learning would be west to east,” says Linehan.
“But within the first three months, learning started moving east to west. Some of the best manufacturing skills in the organization are in this building.”
STARBUCKS COPY GOES HERE
Times may change, but there is one question that never does: “What’s for supper?” Increasingly, the answer is “chicken.”
In the past 30 years, Americans have more than doubled their con-sumption of this versatile, low-fat, low-cholesterol protein source, climbing from an annual average of 27 pounds per person to nearly 60 pounds in 2004.
Fueling the rise has been a move toward healthier eating and the convenience offered by the broad range of innovative products developed by companies such as industry-leader Perdue Farms.
Grilled chicken strips you just heat and serve, dinosaur-shaped nuggets that end up being your kids’ favorite staple, pre-breaded breast tenders, popcorn chicken, and countless other products make home-cooking quick and easy.
But these days, it’s the foodservice products —cooked, frozen chicken shipped to restaurants and distributors — that are the real meat-without-potatoes of Perdue Farms’ new facility located in Perry, Ga.
“Fifty cents of every food dollar now goes to food prepared away from home,” says Joe Forsthoffer, Perdue spokesman. “So, we’re responding to that here. We’re already the No. 1 brand of fresh chicken in the Eastern United States. Frozen products for food-service and retail will help us grow nationally.”
With a forming machine that can make patties or more complicated nugget shapes at a rate of 6,000 pounds of meat per hour and other state-of-the-art equipment, the variety and volume of products produced at this facility is unprecedented, which is why Refrigerated & Frozen Foods magazine recently named it a “Food Plant of the Year”
“We chose Perry because the facility’s capabilities and geographic location fit our strategic growth plans,” says Forsthoffer.
“We can better serve our Southeastern retail customers from here, and the facility’s foodservice capability is important because there’s more room for growth in that sector. These products can travel farther than fresh, allowing us to serve customers nationwide.”
“Thanks to the partnership with the state of Georgia and Georgia Quick Start, we’re moving forward with plans to make the Perry plant one of the world’s leading food processing operations.”
Jim Perdue
Chairman and CEO
Perdue Farms
In 2004, Perdue purchased the former Cagle’s Inc. processing plant, along with its feed mill and hatchery in Forsyth. The initial $14 million investment in the plant was followed by the $146 million expansion now in progress, adding a cooking plant and doubling the capacity of the existing processing plant at what is becoming one of the most sophisti-cated facilities in the United States.
By 2009, the company will have brought a total of 1,700 new jobs to the facility. During that time, Quick Start will be working side-by-side with the company, providing work-force development services ranging from pre-employment assistance to specific job skills training and leadership courses.
“I couldn’t survive without Quick Start training,” says Charlotte Truett, Perdue human resources representative. “Turnover is going down in the processing area, thanks to the two-day pre-employment training.”
“At the cook plant, we recognize the value of well-trained associates,” said Director of Operations Richard Rateau at a recent Quick Start train-ing plan signing ceremony. “We’ve invested money in world-class equipment,” Rateau concluded. “Now we must invest time in world-class training.”
Technical College System
of Georgia
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