e-Learning For Apparel And Textiles Manufacturers

e-Learning is hot. Companies are turning to new technological offerings – whether they are called interactive training, computer-based training, distance learning or e-learning - via web and standalone systems to provide the kind of superior training today’s marketplace demands while simultaneously trimming training and travel costs. Consider the following snapshots highlighting the value of e-learning.

A recent article on Informationweek.com told how premium pet food maker, Iams based in Dayton, Ohio, used Centra Software Inc.’s Symposium module to present the results of new clinical trials to 220 sales representatives. According to the article, the software package - which includes multipoint videoconferencing, voice over IP, online chats and document sharing – costs about $130,000 and has saved Iams $160,000 in airline tickets in just five months.

An article in PC Magazine, The e-Training of America, tells us that major players like McDonald’s, Thrifty Car Rental, and Circuit City are using e-learning to train employees.

A survey by Online Learning Magazine, (www.onlinelearningmag.com,) showed a growing number of companies using e-learning. This year, 24 percent of the companies contacted were utilizing e-learning, up from 16 percent in 2000. Also, out of 612 participants, 40 percent said they plan to launch e-learning programs by the end of 2003.

Techexchange.com decided to make an informal survey to find out what kinds of e-learning resources are available for apparel and textile professionals. We spoke to Cintas one of the world’s most successful users of interactive training for information on how the company develops its corporate training programs. We also spoke with vendors that provide products or support for e-learning including: ATEXINC, Pointcarré, the Textiles Human Resources Council (THRC) and Tukatech.

Cintas: e-Learning Pioneer

Cintas, Cincinnati, OH, was one of the first companies to make a commitment to interactive video training. Its first training system was installed in the late 1980s. Early systems used a PC with a touch screen and video laser discs.

“Those systems worked well most of the time,” said Bill Miller, director, Training & Development, Cintas Corp. “Now, of course, there is an (interactive training) industry and a long list of vendors involved in it.”

Cintas became an early adopter of this technology because of its need to train thousands of front line service sales representatives throughout the United States. These men and women operate Cintas vehicles and service the company’s customers, delivering uniforms, entrance mats, sanitation supplies, cleanroom services as well as first aid and safety products. Most of them start out with little or no customer service experience.

“We were training them through seminars all across the country,” Miller said. “There was quite a bit of travel cost involved. The seminars were scheduled every few months, so the training was never delivered at the right time in the service sales representative’s development. So interactive video made a lot of sense to us.”

Cintas now has 200 libraries in the field that provide training programs via CD. The programs, developed by Electronic Vision Inc. and On Location Multimedia, Inc., cover a wide range of topics including customer relations, the company’s service model, the economics of the business, sales fundamentals and product knowledge.

“We have developed the programs on our own,” Miller said. “Most are full motion video. We chose that method because this is really soft skills training. The video can demonstrate to service sales representatives the specific behaviors that we are trying to establish. The interactive features give them the opportunity to practice what they’ve learned. After the lesson is taught, they are placed in a situation with a customer (on screen) and given choices on how to respond. Then they get to see the consequences of their choices.”

This year Cintas will link up all 200 libraries or kiosks, as they call them, via intranet to a central server at the company’s corporate headquarters.

“It will allow us to monitor what’s going on out there in the field,” Miller said. “It will also enable us to download training programs to the field for the first time. We will still deliver programs with dense video and audio physically via CD. But programs that we write in-house, say for an operational issue of some kind, will be put in a library on the server and can be downloaded to the field as needed.”

The company also plans to begin using some off-the-shelf programs that are appropriate to its business through its new training network. Miller expects that economic factors will boost e-learning appeal and fuel growth.

“At the rate that traveling expenses are going today, there is no doubt in my mind that in the future a much larger share of training will be some type of distance learning,” Miller said. “The American Society for Training and Development feels that over 40% of all training over the next five years is going to be delivered by some form of distance training.”

Cintas Corp. is the leader in the corporate identity uniform industry. The company, which has achieved 32 consecutive years of growth in sales and earnings, to date, was named the top outsourcing services provider in Fortune Magazine's 2001 “America's Most Admired Companies” survey.

THRC Puts Textile Manufacturing Basics On CD

The Textiles Human Resources Council (THRC), Ottawa, Ontario, has available its Textile Manufacturing Basics CD-ROM & Guide, the first in a series of training programs that the organization has developed for the textile industry. THRC is an industry-led, non-profit organization dedicated to the development of world-class textile training and education initiatives.

The program is the first computer-based training program to outline the fundamentals of textile manufacturing in both English and French. It will soon be available in Spanish. It is aimed at employees new to the textile and apparel industries, non-technical employees, employees of industry suppliers and educational institutions.

The CD includes audio, graphics and animation that describe and illustrate textile manufacturing basic in a consistent and user-friendly environment. The comprehensive User Guide, with over 200 pages of in-depth fundamentals, provides additional detailed information covering manufacturing terminology and processes.

Three courses are contained within Textile Manufacturing Basics: the manufacturing of yarn (5 modules), the Weaving Process & Dyeing and Finishing of Woven Fabrics (7 modules), and the Knitting Process & Dyeing and Finishing of Knitted Fabrics (7 modules).

The program was a huge hit at the recent ITMA Asia textile machinery show in Singapore, according to David Kelly, Director, Training Through Technology, THRC. In fact, they sold every CD that they brought with them.

“People are dying to get this information,” Kelly said.

To date, more than 200 copies of Textile Manufacturing Basics have been sold across Canada and in 26 countries in North and South America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

Textile Manufacturing Basics will soon be available in a Web-based format through the THRC training and learning portal, which is currently in the developmental stage.

“Computer-based training, using traditional CD-ROMs and Web technology is a logical and cost-effective choice for the textile industry,” said Jennifer Krenich, THRC Operations/Communications manager. “One of the most striking advantages is its ability to fit into a company’s production schedule.”

THRC has testimonials from a host of Canadian companies including: Bennett Fleet (Québec) Inc., Cavalier Textiles, Hafner Inc. and Canada Sportswear. In the United States, Perry Ellis International has purchased ten copies of Textile Manufacturing Basics.

Pointcarré Offers Product Demos and Customer Support On The Web

Pointcarré, New York City, is using WebEx Communications, Inc.’s real-time communications infrastructure for business meetings on the web to make presentations and provide customer support.

Setting up a meeting over the web is a simple affair. Pointcarré sets up the meeting with WebEx and then provides the site URL to the customer. Everything is safe, secure and password protected.

“It’s personal, private, no one else can see what’s going on,” said Steve Greenberg with Pointcarré. “You can do it with multiple users. As long as they have a good connection, it is as if they are sitting in the room with you.”

Pointcarré has been doing this for several years now including demos for clients in South America, Hawaii, Canada and all over the United States without leaving New York. The company has also used the Internet meetings for customer support. Recent innovations including voice over Internet and onscreen video have added convenience.

“If a customer calls and says ‘I have 10 minutes now, can we do something,’ I can get on the Internet, open a meeting, they log in and we’re talking,” Greenberg said. “We do a lot of business that way.”

ATEXINC Brings Training Alive With Textile Images

Digital Textiles™, the brainchild of textile author and educator Patty Brown, is a high-resolution collection of graphic images on CD-ROM designed for use by educators and businesses. This compilation of over 1,500 images, presents fibers, yarns and fabrics in a variety of magnifications, in Microsoft PowerPoint format for ease of use.

Arranged as a series of 10 volumes, each volume illustrates a variety of examples within a textile category such as “natural fibers” or “manufactured fibers.” Recently the entire collection was compressed to fit on a single CD to allow for ease of use with no discernable difference in resolution.

“Our main computer-based training information, called Digital Textiles™, is used for teaching about basic textile facts,” said Brown. “We also have some materials addressing apparel manufacturing and quality. We developed our materials during the past year and already over 20 universities and businesses are using them.”

Brown points out that people still need to touch and feel textiles to really understand them so her company also makes The Textile Kit swatch set, a traditional, hands-on teaching tool.

While most of the companies we contacted pointed to savings from reduced travel costs, Brown noted that on-line resources are much cheaper and easier to maintain and keep up to date.

“Computer-based training allows distance learning,” Brown said. “It also lets us provide up-to-date information, in an easily visible format at a relatively low cost. It also allows materials to be kept up-to-date at a lower cost and provides a consistent, low-cost reference tool for employees after initial training.”

One company using Atexinc's Digital Textiles™ software is AMC, a global enterprise with 56 offices worldwide. The company is developing its own web-based technical training program.

“Being able to do training on a global scale and link everybody together with the same content is much more economical, much more feasible than traveling and giving the training onsite,” said George Hall, fabric specialist, AMC.

AMC decided on web-based training since its offices are already linked via intranet.

Tukatech Takes CAD Training Online

Tukatech, Los Angeles, is using e-learning to make it easier for their customers to use its TukaCAD and TukaStudio software. The company targets small apparel makers and freelance pattern makers through its international chain of TukaCenters, which company founder Ram Sareen has compared to the Kinko’s chain of copy shops.

“Our market research tells us that about 80 percent of the world doesn’t use computerized systems (to design apparel),” said Sonia Chhabra, Marketing Manager, Tukatech, Los Angeles. “A lot of the smaller manufacturers are still doing everything by hand. We’ve allowed them to use what the big players use without having to spend that kind of money.”

The Tukatech website offers demo software, as well as text and video help files that can be read via Acrobat reader and Lotus Streamcam plug-in respectively. In addition, Tukatech is even thinking about putting its CAD software online.

TUKAdesign showing user how to create a dart

“TUKATECH will soon launch a section of their website which will allow users to log in with a password and use the TukaCAD system directly online,” Chhabra said. “The marker can then be emailed to a TukaCenter, which will plot it out for them. Then they can go pick it up or the TukaCenter can ship it out to them.”

While free training classes come with the company’s software, customers worldwide are taking advantage of every learning tool that Tukatech offers.

“For example, we get a lot of people from Africa, and it is much more convenient for them to learn it over the web than it is for them to come to Los Angeles or pay for us to go out there,” Chhabra said.

Summing Up

So what do Cintas' in-house training programs, ATEXINC's textile images on CD, Pointcarre's virtual meetings via WebEx, THRC's Textile Manufacturing Basics on CD-ROM and Tukatech's extensive on-line tutorials, all have in common?

They can give the user what he or she needs to have an interactive learning experience available virtually anytime and anywhere. Whether you are looking for the tools to build your own in-house training programs, training in specific skills or technology or vendor specific help for software or hardware, you can expect e-learning offerings for apparel and textile professionals to grow. Analysts predict that e-learning should have a 100 percent annual growth rate over the next five years; driven by economics and the availability of new technologies like voice over IP.