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Do-It-Yourself Trade Schools

Michael Ochoa stands on the aisle between two low-temperature display cases that mark a makeshift entrance to a “grocery store.” They’re stocked with water jugs to simulate the weight of what would be the likes of frozen foods and ice cream.

The cases—along with walk-in freezers, exposed wires, pipes and fans—are part of a 12,000-square-foot version of a functioning supermarket that serves as a training ground for technicians at Source Refrigeration & HVAC Inc.

The Anaheim-based company is among the latest to launch a training center in Orange County to educate new hires, existing employees and customers.

The goal is to narrow the “skills gap”—a term often used by employers and industry analysts in the manufacturing and industrial service sectors to explain a shortage of skilled workers.

The gap has grown in recent years, as increases in global wages in some offshore markets have combined with rising costs for shipping and concerns about quality control to prompt a significant number of manufacturers to bring work back to the U.S.

“The biggest problem when we’re talking to a customer is finding well-trained and competent technicians,” said Ochoa, a senior vice president at Source Refrigeration.

Ochoa oversaw the recent relocation of the company’s training center from Chino in a move that increased floor space by 50% and added new programs.

Source Refrigeration services refrigeration systems for grocers, and counts Ralphs, Vons, Walmart and Target stores among its largest customers. It registers more than $200 million in annual revenue and looks to double that in the next few years with plans for acquisitions that will help the company expand in the Southeastern U.S.

The company has about 1,000 employees throughout its 35 locations in the U.S., with roughly 150 at its Anaheim headquarters.

Source Refrigeration’s training facility has “hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment, but we paid about $5,000 total,” Ochoa said. “These were all donated from customers.”

Seasonal Schedule

About 300 technicians are expected to cycle through the center in a typical year. Classes are kept small—with between six to eight participants—and generally run from November through March, although they sometimes stretch “a bit into April,” according to Ochoa, who said it’s difficult to “pull our guys from the field once our season starts, when it starts warming up.”

The company has a director of training who came from outside the refrigeration industry but is a veteran in leadership training and organization development.

Its training classes, which span eight different levels, are developed in-house and taught by staff members who are pulled in from duty as field technicians for occasional stints with the students.

“Our trainers will hide problems in the systems, and the technicians will have to find and diagnose them, and propose how to fix them,” Ochoa said. “They’ll make a leak or something for … the Refrigeration 101 class.”

Source Refrigeration isn’t alone in putting more resources into in-house technical training and education. Foreign companies also have set up classrooms in OC.

Biesse Group

Italy-based woodworking tools maker Biesse Group announced last month that it’s opening a new “West Coast Showroom, strategically located in Anaheim.”

The U.S. unit of Biesse Group is headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., and makes machines for processing wood and plastic that’s used to make furniture and countertops. Biesse also operates a division called Intermac that focuses on fabrication of glass and stone.

The company notched $518.8 million in overall revenue in 2011, with U.S. sales accounting for about 9%.

Biesse said its new Anaheim location will house two regional managers and seven field service technicians.

It has other showrooms in Charlotte, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. The facilities are used year-round for meetings, training sessions and other in-house events, such as its One2One educational series, including seminars, demonstrations and networking opportunities.

The first Anaheim One2One is scheduled for April 25 and 26.

Sandvik

Swedish metal-cutting tools maker Sandvik Coromant established a 20,000-square-foot training center in Cypress early last year.

A one-year scorecard shows that the facility has served 2,500 students through 28 different programs, according to Robert Page, manager of the Sandvik Coromant Training and Productivity Center.

Sandvik Coromant, which runs 26 such centers around the world, is a subsidiary of Swedish engineering group Sandvik AB, which had $15.39 billion in overall sales in 2012 and employs roughly 50,000 workers.

The Cypress center has helped Sandvik Coromant stay close to its customers here and make contact with new prospects throughout Southern California.

Sandvik also sees the center as a way to forge ties with schools in the region, part of a broader effort to boost education for the manufacturing and industrial services trades.

“Between opening last year to this date, we’ve probably had well over a dozen field trips, where the students come in for what we call ‘Manufacturing Day,’ ” Page said. “It’s an awareness thing. We give them a tour of the facility and sit them down for an hour. Let them know what types of careers are out there and the paths to get to these careers.”

Page is part of the state advisory committee for career technical education.

He also sits on the board of SkillsUSA California Inc., a nonprofit career-technical organization of about 5,100 members. The group provides training and hosts competitions for students.

The level of participation is on the rise, Page said, citing about 2,000 contestants who participated last year versus 1,400 a year earlier.

“It’s funny, the connection between education and industry—we need to work on that,” Page said. “The education sector is trying. It’s doing a lot better than it has in the past, especially when it comes to technology. They’re trying to bring back industrial arts programs.”

Industry Awareness

Sandvik’s productivity centers weren’t designed to generate revenue, “but it’s brought value to our customers and awareness to the industry,” Page said.

Nor were they a small investment on the company’s part, according to John Israelsson, president of Sandvik Market Area Americas.

“We have well over 100 machines in our 26 centers,” Israelsson said. “These machines cost a quarter-million to a million [dollars] each. And the Cypress center has no other function but to train. Some of our other productivity centers are attached to our other offices. We believe them so much that we put them in locations where we don’t have any office-based staff. The investment is significant.”

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