First Posted: 2/10/2015
LIMA — If the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center experiences any cutbacks in production, stakeholders want to ensure that workers can keep their skills honed.
To that end, Allen County commissioners approved a resolution Tuesday to enter into a $100,000 contract with Future IQ Partners to help create a workforce development and skill retention plan for the facility.
“This will begin our efforts in earnest to support workforce development at JSMC,” project manager Denis Glenn said.
The firm will begin meeting with community stakeholders, including entities such as the Lima/Allen Economic Development Group, the United Auto Workers union and representatives from the U.S. Army and General Dynamics Land Systems.
“They will meet develop a path forward to create a two-day period of scenario planning, where we’ll go in and do a lot of intensive effort to define workforce development and skill retention we have to do for JSMC,” Glenn said. “We’ll have an action plan so we can request funding from the federal government to go implement and execute the action plan we’re developing now.”
By having a workforce development plan in place, the facility can guard against losing skilled labor in the event of a downturn.
“It will define a scenario that we will go through and create specific steps to take in order to keep our skilled workforce at JSMC at their highest level of skill base,” Glenn said. “In the event there is a downturn, there are things they can then go do, like other products to build or other activities to keep their skills at a high level of retention.”
