John Jay targets fall 2017 start

Planning continues on the new manufacturing maintenance training facility inside John Jay Center for Learning.
After receiving a $924,500 grant from Indiana Department of Workforce Development, John Jay, along with the Jay-Blackford Manufacturing Council, is on schedule to start its first industrial maintenance classes in the fall of 2017.
John Jay executive director Rusty Inman said that since the grant money was awarded on Oct. 21, he and others have been working on acquiring equipment and hiring staff for the new facility, which will occupy the facility’s basement.
“We’re looking at getting equipment ordered in the January, February time frame. It takes three months to have it delivered, and then that gives us time for people to be trained,” Inman said. 
The center will also hire a new career counselor and instructor for the programs. Inman said the search has already begun for the instructor.
“We’re trying to work right now to identify that person, we’re looking to have someone hired in that position, I would guess, by March probably,” Inman said.
The grant was matched with more than $2.3 million from private industry partners in Jay and Blackford counties, including FCC-Indiana, Fort Recovery Industries, POET Biorefining, Sonoco, TLS-By Design, Pennville Custom Cabinets, Tyson Mexican Original, NPR, QEP, 3M, Petosky Plastics, Stanley and Tru-Form Steel.
The program will be conducted in partnership with Wright State University Lake Campus, and will focus on teaching expertise in manufacturing maintenance. It’s an effort to bridge a gap, which exists locally and throughout the nation, between demand and supply of workers who can perform maintenance on equipment.
Training equipment will be used to teach hands-on classes for skills like welding, electrical maintenance, programmable logic controller maintenance and hydraulics. Students will be able to work at their own pace through the classes, making it easier for current manufacturing employees to add new skills in the evenings after work.
Dean Jetter, CEO of Fort Recovery Industries and a member of the John Jay’s board of directors, said the new program will help his company by providing supplemental training to what is already taught in-house.
“We do some of our own training, we have a maintenance apprentice program. What we can do is utilize courses that are taught at John Jay, we can have our apprentice go there to get certain pieces of the whole body of knowledge that they need to get,” Jetter said. “It’s just a huge problem if you don’t have the expertise to maintain and repair that kind of manufacturing equipment … Technology is going to keep advancing, and automation is going to keep advancing. The costs of this type of equipment are large and you can’t afford to have them down, because of the amount of investment, plus meeting your customers needs.”
Jetter said that even though Fort Recovery Industries has a qualified industrial maintenance crew on staff, it’s still important to address the skills gap nationwide and prepare for the future.
“U.S. manufacturing is on the move, but this skills gap is a problem,” Jetter said.
Jeremy Gulley, Jay School Corporation superintendent and a member of the Jay-Blackford Manufacturing Council, said focusing on manufacturing has been a priority.
“It’s been a collaboration of economic development for Jay and Blackford. Jay Schools didn’t have manufacturing four years ago,” Gulley said. “17 years ago when the John Jay Center was born this was the vision of what they wanted to see and now we’re seeing the fruits of that.”
Local industries that have supported the development of the program will also help provide input for its new curriculum.
“They’ve asked industry to look over what courses will be offer, hopefully we can match up courses with needs of manufacturers,” said Jetter.
“This is demand driven," said Inman. "This is industry training that we’re doing."