KBA North America expands service organization

The apprentice program is a combination of formal education and on-the-job training. One of the first new trainees has been hired and will be based in Minnesota.

For training purposes, KBA North America has implemented On Demand’s Learning Management System (LMS), a web-based online university tool to develop courses and provide training in the field, track online training and make training more accessible to all employees. In conjunction with its regular training programs, KBA North America is using the LMS to educate its employees across the company to provide better service to its customers. The investment in LMS also includes a dedicated administrator to improve overall customer satisfaction.

KBA North America said the LMS is allowing the company’s dispersed workforce access to training and information when and where they need it.

Elaine Barnes, training and development specialist with KBA North America, said: ‘The first department at KBA North America to utilize LMS was the service department. Since our technicians are spread out all over the country, this was a perfect system to improve communication, provide discussion forums, post up-to-date resource manuals and offer critical training courses.

‘Certain information lends itself to online interaction, such as being able to quiz our technicians on what they’ve learned. We’ve had a great response from the service technicians. It allows us to be proactive and be current with their training and education.’

The two-year apprentice program is intended to develop future technicians, while the new training program is in place to ‘keep our service technicians up-to-date so they can quickly respond to customers’ needs’, KBA North America said.

KBA North America has also appointed a number of new technicians covering all support functions, with plans to add more.

Tim McKeon, vice-president of service and operations at KBA North America, said: ‘As KBA has experienced exponential growth with our existing customer base as well as numerous new customers, it is imperative that we continue to be the easiest company to do business with to immediately respond to our customers’ needs.

‘With that in mind, we’ve made three key decisions to ensure we maintain our industry-leading high customer satisfaction experience with our service support team.’

Winston Packaging, a fourth-generation family-owned printed paperboard packaging company located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, recently set a new world job production record on its KBA Rapida 106 41in 6-color press, reaching an average speed of 18,964sph, equaling a total of 127,625 sheets in less than seven hours.

McKeon added: ‘This is only the beginning of our expansion phase to meet and exceed our customers’ needs.’