Driving Learning Excellence and Operational Efficiency at Michigan Sugar Company

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How Michigan Sugar Company closed key skill gaps, engaged and retained employees by streamlining training process.

The Challenge

Michigan Sugar Company faced challenges in preparing for the retirement of their seasoned employees and impact of COVID-19, which resulted in losing over 30% of their workforce. The food and beverage manufacturer relied on traditional and unstructured on-the-job training which would take 15 years to fully train a qualified operator. This lack of formal training strategy created operational inefficiencies and hindered the company’s ability to attract and retain new talent.

The Choice

As part of their operational excellence goals, Michigan Sugar Company partnered with Vector Solutions to design and implement a structured training program. With Vector LMS’s pre-built learning paths, the food and beverage manufacturer executed fundamental industrial maintenance and safety training to 70 percent of their retained workforce during their four-month maintenance period. The organization worked closely with experienced union leadership to preview and test the training, ensuring alignment with workforce needs. Vector Solutions’ extensive content library, pre-built learning paths, ease of use, and level of support made it an ideal choice for the organization.

“The volume of topics and content that Vector Solutions has really stood out. Computer-based training is very powerful in making the training more available and accessible for our employees. With Vector, the power of the platform has continued to grow, improve, and better meet our needs. The ease of use, functionality, and volume of content are all good reasons, but the level of support has been the most satisfying. I guess we didn’t feel the other competitors really stacked up.”

– Monte Ackerman, Director of Engineering and Maintenance

The Change

The shift to Vector Solutions LMS welcomed immediate and long-term improvements to Michigan Sugar Company learning and training programs. Key benefits include:

• Enhanced Training Availability: Computer-based training made training available and accessible for all employees. This reduced training time significantly while preserving the quality of knowledge.
• Increased Training Capacity: The organization increased their training capacity from four people to 16 people per plant training simultaneously, surpassing their initial expectations.
• Increased Demand for Training: The training program generated high demand among employees which built a perception of high value and effectiveness. This also led to Senior employees with over 20 years of experience signing up for the training and gaining value from it. This unexpected interest from senior staff highlights the training quality and relevance.
• Boosted Training Adoption: Despite the initial hesitancy, employees quickly adapted to the training program. Union leadership and employees found the training to be valuable and relevant to their daily tasks.
• Increased Confidence in Training Capabilities: The successful implementation and positive feedback increased the organization’s confidence in its ability to train employees effectively. This led to build further plans for expanding the training program to include leadership and soft skills training.

“We expected when we offered the training to get some of our newer people, like 0-to-2-year employees. But the reverse happened, and we had more senior people with 20 years’ experience sign up. They felt that the training was very valuable and offered a lot of knowledge and information they really didn’t know, even though they’ve been working in our factory for 20 years, and they believed it was job related and pertinent to what they did every day. That’s what drove the demand—people recognized the value, saw others benefiting from it, or noticed that experienced team members were embracing it with confidence.”

– Monte Ackerman, Director of Engineering and Maintenance

The Impact

Since implementing Vector Solutions’ Learning and Training Management solutions, Michigan Sugar Company enhanced their training programs. By transitioning to a computer-based training program, the organization has made training more accessible and standardized, addressing previous challenges with non-structured on-the-job training. The positive reception from employees, including senior staff, and the high demand for training underscore its value. With strong support from Vector Solutions, Michigan Sugar Company has significantly improved its training capacity and is well positioned for continued growth and operational excellence.

“This was a core initiative to help us create learning paths and to standardize and formalize the training and not only train people faster, but we do believe it will be important in attracting, higher quality candidates who are seeking growth and development as part of their job selection process. That’s been a great added benefit.”

– Monte Ackerman, Director of Engineering and Maintenance