Getting In Gear
Community colleges drive the success of the auto industry,
but retention continues to be a problem.
By David Pluviose
In September, Toyota Motor Corp. celebrated the production of its five millionth Camry at its Georgetown, Ky., plant. The Camry has been the top-selling sedan in the United States for four consecutive years and is one of the big reasons Toyota closed the most recent fiscal year with $11.7 billion in net earnings. Camrys began rolling from the Georgetown assembly line in 1988 and have grown in technological sophistication through the years. That evolution has also spawned the need for continuous worker training.
As is usually the case, community colleges were there to fill that need, says Jim White, the director of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System’s Center for Excellence in Automotive Manufacturing. KCTCS has been associated with the auto manufacturing giant since Toyota first set up shop in Georgetown, now its largest U.S. plant.
“We were involved in their skill trades training from the start,” White says. “That relationship is growing dramatically, to the point that we are now setting up and operating a skill trades training program in a facility on their site, but available to the community as well as to Toyota employees.”
The automotive industry has seen its share of negative headlines in recent years. Numerous plant closings and wide-scale overseas outsourcing have hit communities hard, and several companies have been forced to lay off thousands of workers. But despite the grim reports, White says auto manufacturing “as a whole is doing
quite well.
