New Machinery in Town

Creating Transferable On-the-Job Technical Skills through Automation

This year marks the Bean Project’s 30^th Anniversary of changing women’s lives by providing stepping stones to self-sufficiency through social enterprise. What does that mean to us in an ever-changing business operations landscape? It means that we must make sure we are serving more women better through the program services we offer and the technical skills they learn while working in our dry food manufacturing business. 

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New Semi-Automated Machinery

As the consumer-packaged goods industry evolves and employers seek more skilled employees, we reviewed our operations and determined we needed to provide more technical skill training as well as create more efficiencies in our operations, cut the cost of labor required for each product and to increase wages overall.

Adding equipment to our production floor to semi-automate our processes will not only lead to higher paying jobs for our graduates, but it also creates an opportunity to learn more transferable on-the-job technical and interpersonal skills, including operation monitoring, attention to detail, critical thinking, equipment maintenance, operation and control of equipment, troubleshooting, quality control analysis, complex problem solving, coordination, equipment selection, dependability, communication, and active learning.

There’s More…

In addition to the semi-automation, we will have new ergonomic shipping workstations that will provide more flexibility for our business capabilities, increase productivity, lower the risk of injuries, and create a better safety culture. These stations will be like many of the work environments into which our graduates may secure jobs.

We’re Grateful for These Steps Forward

Thanks to amazing funders, we have been able to make this all possible and provide more transferable work skills, technical skills and real-life production simulation within our business operations.

Our program participants have responded very positively to the introduction of these new opportunities. They are very excited to be a part of the implementation process and to learn new technical skills that might pay off in the future. As with many changes to business operations or in personal life, there are hurdles that must be overcome, and we are prepared to tackle those as they come our way!

We look forward to having you join us on this new journey!