The Ongoing Search for a Good Restaurant: Mexico

Last week, I made my first trip to Monterrey, Mexico, and I spent the week with Carlos Sarmiento, our Client Executive for this territory. This trip was a real eye opener for me in many ways, both for business and social understanding.

I never realized the number of large U.S. manufacturing operations that are located in Monterrey. Carlos will have his hands full in this region but so far he is doing a fantastic job getting us in front of some of the premier manufacturing companies. During our time in Monterrey, we met with John Deere, Lennox, Nemak, GE Energy, and MD Helicopter, just to name a few. I was worried about the language barrier, since as Carlos will tell you, my Spanish is not the best. Luckily, all but one meeting was conducted in English. For the one exception, let me tell you, I had no clue what was being said. Carlos afterwards did tell me that the meeting went well, but for all I know, they could have been discussing sports or the weather.

After the long days of visiting companies and knocking on many doors, Carlos was excited to show me what Mexico was all about. I have to say this was the first time I was not the one deciding where we were going to eat that night. I was leaving this up to the resident expert of Mexican culture and food. During our first night, Carlos took me to a fancy restaurant named San Carlos, where their specialty was lamb. Of course, the menu was in Spanish, so Carlos had to translate and I decided to order the rack of lamb. I was not expecting what came out. There was just the meat on a plate. This was followed by tortilla shells along with a bowl of homemade salsa. The meal was fantastic and was the first of many great restaurants where everything was served with tortilla shells and eaten with your hands. One of my favorites was a busy “fast food” place named El Pollo Loco, or the Crazy Chicken. Here again they just provided a whole chicken on a plate and brought out tortilla shells with a few types of salsas. No forks… just eat with your hands. Fantastic.

In Monterrey, MX I learned that both the training and food is “hands-on”. I truly feel that our online training will complement the on-the-job training as it does here in the states.

James Vickers
Director Of Sales

Staffing Update

Tooling U is glad to welcome Amy Solis to the team. Amy joins the Government and Education Group to aid them in the research and prospecting of new government programs, technical schools, and colleges. Amy is currently training for a triathlon, so when you get a second, wish her luck!

Bryan Knaack
Director of Business Development

Updated Reporting Capabilities

One of the most powerful tools at a Tooling U Administrator's disposal is the Group Report. Group Reports provide Administrators with the ability to track student usage, progress, and performance within Tooling U; and for the Site Administrator there exist additional reports to review usage and progress for the entire organization.

Current Tooling U Administrators enjoy several “canned” reports (reports available to all Administrators) and the ability to create custom reports to meet their specific needs. Following the launch of the sixth version of Tooling U, one of the areas the Application Development team monitored and reviewed was the Group Reports section and identified several areas of improvement, which led to the development of several enhancements:

• The Amount of Data – Large amounts of data can be accumulated throughout years of use and several reports were generated using an organization’s entire history resulting in extremely large sets of data. To prevent this, many reports now feature several search parameters to allow the Administrator to narrow the amount of data returned in the report.

  
  

• Data Filtering – Custom reports are great when an Administrator has a specific report format they need to run on a regular basis; but they can become a bother when one of the canned reports retrieves the data the Administrator wants but requires the Administrator to page through too many results. To address this issue column filters have been added to almost all of the reports, allowing the Administrator to search for a subset of the results based on the column being filtered. For example, in the Comprehensive Report an Administrator can enter in “Smith” (last name) and modify the results to only display students with “Smith” in their last name. One filter per column can be used, allowing for a flexible and powerful method of filtering and sorting data.
  

• Data Sorting – Launched with the release of version six of Tooling U, many Administrators may not be aware the column titles (when applicable) allow the Administrator to sort the entire report by the data in the selected column. A single click sorts the data in an ascending order (a, b, c, d … etc.), a second click sorts the data in a descending order (z, y, x, w … etc.), while a third click will reset the report to its default display.
  

• Exporting Data – Many of the reports provide the capability the export their results directly to an Excel file. All of these Excel exports feature some enhanced features which went live with the release of Tooling U Version 6. However, after monitoring exceptionally large data exports it was discovered that the file size grew exponentially in size, creating difficulties downloading the report. Eventually, it would be possible to reach the limit of what Excel could handle. To compensate for this, all reports to Excel have now been capped to a specific level, which once reached will then switch the export format to CSV (a flat text file) reducing the size of the file while allowing more data to be exported.

While they are currently in the testing phase, these Group Reports enhancements will launch at the end of June.

If you are a current Tooling U Administrator and have some ideas of your own regarding the Group Reports feature please visit the Tooling U Idea Exchange at http://www.toolingu.com/community to share your idea’s with us and help us improve your Tooling U experience.

Tom Torres

Web Developer

Kick Down the Door!

Cindy Bernosky & Gretchen Schultz of the Government & Education Group here at Tooling U headed to Minnesota earlier this month to participate in the “Kick Down the Door: Building Bridges to Connection” conference organized by the MPMA (Minnesota Precision Manufacturing Association).

The conference, held April 29th through May 1st, provided a forum to understand the needs & concerns of everyone involved in the manufacturing industry. Cindy said the meeting was really productive, stating that “the group just wants what is best for the industry overall. It was great to have secondary and post-secondary educators with industry in the same room.”

The overall goal of the conference was to find ways to improve technical education throughout the state of Minnesota. Some of those improvements include getting educators and industry on the same page, and understanding the needs of students, employers and instructors. The conference included break-out sessions to discuss these needs, and what should happen as the manufacturing industry moves into the future.

Rumor has it the casino night of the conference was also quite a good time. Reportedly, Cindy was the highest bidder for a bottle of wine, but we haven’t seen the bottle around the office, so we don’t know where it ended up.

Toni Neary

Government & Education Specialist

Photo Courtesy The Minnesota Precision Manufacturing Association

A Look Back

Every so often at Tooling U, we work on a project that causes us to look back at where we have been. The recent release of our new website in March spurred a flurry of conversation about how we have grown since we started in 2000. Our newest design incorporates our modern approach to training in an easy-to-use site. However, just a glance at each of our homepages reveals how many changes we made to get here.

2000

2001

2003

2004


2006


2008


2009

As you can see, it has been a long road to get to where we are. We think each change has been an improvement not just in how we look but in how we offer the best online training available.

Chad Schron
VP Operations

Expanding the Team

Tooling U is proud to announce that we have added two members to our team.

Jim Kasperik has been hired as Director of Services. Jim will help Tooling U customers create and implement training programs within their facilities.

In addition, Tony Keating is the new Client Executive in the Northeast area of the United States. Tony will be working with clients in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

James Vickers

Director of Sales

The New Face of Manufacturing

Times are tough in manufacturing. Anyone even casually following the news lately knows a lot of companies are struggling. For companies in some of the hardest hit fields like the auto industry, business is drying up. But if there’s one thing I’ve seen, it’s that a good company will always pull through. Manufacturing companies rely on innovation to get through tough times, and now is no different.

A lot of smaller, contract-based manufacturing companies have found that diversifying the industries they work with is key to getting by and even possibly growing. To help them out, Tooling U recently sponsored Industry & Innovation: The New Face of Manufacturing to discuss how to do this effectively. This symposium in Cleveland, OH focused on moving into the energy, medical and aerospace industries. This conference was also a great opportunity for Tooling U to meet with manufacturers looking to continuously improve their businesses. TU’s Chad Schron, James Vickers, and I went to the event to meet with the wide variety of companies that are dealing with the challenges of diversifying.

Jack Schron, CEO of both Jergens Inc. and Tooling U, came to speak in two different sessions on March 17th regarding the importance of training a workforce to become a more flexible company. These “early bird” sessions drew nearly 200 people to hear Jack discuss the pros and cons of different training. Jack explained that the best option with training programs is a blended approach. Using theory-based training to back up hands-on practice helps people learn more quickly, and retain that knowledge on the shop floor. Having knowledgeable people in a company makes diversification a ready option in tough times.

Sarah Wering

Marketing Manager