E Newsletter December 2007
Wired Scholarships Help Company Competitiveness
Finger Lakes Wired scholarships bolster productivity and growth at two local companies.
“Wired has truly made a difference in the global competitiveness of Newtex,” says Jerry Joliet, President and CEO Newtex Industries Inc. Wired provided $35,662 in funding for training all Newtex customer service and purchasing personnel in Microsoft Excel and all modules of the company’s Enterprise Resource Planning system.
“Our capabilities to service customers with accessible, accurate, and relevant data - stock levels, ship dates, product information - has improved dramatically,” Joliet says. The company’s accounting, planning and production teams have also benefitted.
Newtex revenue has increased by 10-12 percent over the past year and that growth is partly due to having knowledgeable, trained customer service people who can answer customer inquiries quickly and accurately, Joliet says.
Another company, ROMOLD Inc., used a $4,355 Wired grant in February for a five day on-site training event teaching manufacturing employees how to use a state of the art computer-aided design and machining
(CAD/CAM) software package.
“This training has increased productivity and reduced our already aggressive lead times, all helping us to achieve growth this year,” says Diane Romano, Office Manager at ROMOLD, a high-tech manufacturer of molds for plastic injection. One of ROMOLD’s custom machining processes is now nearly 10 times faster, enabling the company to meet all of its deliveries and ship earlier in many cases.
Finger Lakes Wired initiatives focus on a nine-county region and are funded by the U. S. Department of Labor WIRED (Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic
Development) Initiative.
For information on how to apply for a scholarship for your business please contact Claudia Burcke or see Grants.
December 2007
