Electronics manufacturing services provider Paramit Corp is
investing in training for its 250 employees to keep high technology
manufacturing jobs in California.
Electronics manufacturing services provider Paramit Corp is investing in training for its 250 employees to keep high technology manufacturing jobs in California.
The training at Paramit Corp. is designed to teach the workers sharper and wider skills that will sharpen the company’s edge in today’s highly competitive market.
It is being conducted with help from the California Employment Training Panel (ETP), a state agency created to keep California businesses competitive so they can keep good jobs within the state.
Paramit is a contract manufacturer specialized in assembling and testing electronic equipment primarily for semiconductor, telecommunications, networking, medical and industrial-control companies located in the Silicon Valley.
Some of that work has moved abroad in recent years, convincing Paramit that it needs to focus on solving more complex outsourcing problems and managing a wider variety of products, said Mike Keer, Paramit’s director of systems engineering.
“We’ve clearly differentiated ourselves in a niche that we can grow here in California,” Keer said, “by providing services and adding value that offshore companies can’t, such as local engineering support, complex assembly and test services. That kind of support requires a very high level of skills.”
And that’s where the training comes in, Keer said.
“We have skilled workers, but we’re investing in a higher level of skills to raise performance and to compete against companies that don’t have the same level of technical expertise and support services that we offer.”
Paramit has had its share of cutbacks with the economy, but Keer said it has stabilized.
“We are doing selective hiring,” Keer said. “We’ve seen slight improvements from last year. We have had an increase in orders from our customer base. We are one of very few CMs (contract manufacturer) making a profit. The good thing about being a CM is someone always need to build something.”
California Training Cooperative, an employer association based in Monterey and Irvine, helped Paramit plan a training program and started classes at the plant in January.
Classes such as lean manufacturing, process mapping, continuous improvement, project management and customer communications are designed to stretch over an 18-month period until each employee receives from 42 to 180 hours of training.
The ETP contract is for $409,000 and Paramit must match the government money at least dollar for dollar. The state portion of the cost is financed not by taxpayers but by California businesses themselves, which pay $7 a year per employee into the Employment Training Fund.
The ETP was formed 20 years ago to foster the retention of high-wage, high-skilled jobs in California, upgrade workers’ skills and help create new jobs.
It has also helped improve the state’s economy by spawning export products, and assisting industries as they switched to more productive practices.
In its two decades of existence, the ETP has helped train approximately 550,000 Californians through 50,000 employers. About two-thirds of the training was designed to keep manufacturing and high-tech jobs in the state.
Details: www.paramit.com.
