PMI to Build Technical, Retention Skills

Posted January 29, 2016 at 1:00 pm

pmiheader2016.gif

Register for PMI

As executives from textile services companies attest to increasingly difficult challenges in retaining talented, dedicated plant operations employees, TRSA’s Roger F. Cocivera Production Management Institute (PMI) is poised to be more pertinent than ever. The April 11-14 program in Dallas, the 27th in an annual series, will offer training that improves line managers’ savvy in getting more done with less.

According to TRSA’s most recent Plant Employee Compensation Report, employee turnover (percentage of workers hired in a year) in the industry is pushing 30 percent, up from 17 percent when this survey started in 2011. Opportunities have abounded for workers to move to other industries as the U.S. workforce has expanded to record levels and unemployment has fallen to 5 percent. This has placed additional pressures on textile services corporate management, GMs, and plant/production managers and supervisors, including the need to better recognize and reward star performers.

PMI attacks this problem by training managers to be more effective in evaluating efficiency and performance. They learn new productivity-boosting techniques and how to challenge employees to adopt them. In addition, completing PMI enables them to better recognize opportunities to temporarily or permanently reduce workforce size.

It also helps their employers retain them. “I wasn't sure this industry was for me,” recalls Chad Sakahara, assistant production manager, United Laundry Services, Honolulu, who started PMI in 2015. “PMI renewed my interest, sending me back home wanting to make and suggest a lot of changes. I felt I could relate to everything. I met a lot of great people and made excellent contacts.”

PMI’s core consists of classroom instruction but not just lectures. Included is a tour of a local laundry facility that compels participants to share observations of production tactics viewed in light of their own experience. Thus, attendees learn from each other as well as industry experts who instruct. Group exercises take advantage of this collective talent as well, requiring participants to devise solutions collectively to real-world scenarios presented as case studies.

Attendees graduate PMI by attending two sessions of the program one year apart. First-timers take the PMI Productioncurriculum, which emphasizes fundamentals of laundry production and operations, emphasizing key principles of:

  • Productivity
  • Quality
  • Safety
  • Sustainability
     

During the next 12 months, students participate in a series of self-paced, online modules on topics such as human resources, communications, finance, time/project management and business ethics. Students then meet again in person to take PMI Management, another four days of interactive sessions that further refine their production and laundry-specific management skills.

As part of the PMI Management curriculum, students are tested and can earn TRSA’s Certified Professional Laundry Manager (CPLM) designation, the foundation for continuous learning and improvement through ongoing professional development activities. Individuals maintain their CPLMs after PMI by fulfilling options such as participating in continuing education (TRSA events and webinars, college/university courses, internet classes, trade shows), association/professional society membership, teaching and volunteer service/leadership. TRSA initiated CPLM to improve the industry’s management retention by fostering more personally fulfilling careers in the business.

124