Cytec Industries

Wendy: Welcome to another addition to Momentum where we share ideas of how you can gain and sustain momentum within your career. I'm Wendy Walden. Today we are talking about Cytec Industries about its recent expansion announcement into the Greenville County Area. To join me to talk about expansion is Don McCullough, Director HR of Cytec and we'll also be joined by Cynthia Eason, Vice President of Corporate Economic Development for Greenville Technology.

Wendy: And Don, Cynthia Welcome.

Don and Cynthia: Thank you

Wendy: Don, before we start, by the way congratulations on the expansion. That's wonderful news particularly for the State of SC. Tell us a little about Cytec

Don: Well, Cytech is a specialty chemical, specialty materials company. Our headquarters are in West Patterson, NJ. We are one of the largest in our business. We take pride in what we do. We manufacture some of the highest quality products that you can buy for commercial or military aircraft.

Wendy: Great, wonderful. Now on to the expansion announcement. I think the paper reported a 150 million dollar expansion and that also included 225, or 250 new jobs to the area. Tell us about the expansion and the reason behind it.

Don: Well, currently we are in what we call a sold out market as far as carbon fibers are concerned. Carbon fibers are used to reinforce composite materials which is used in the air space industry primarily or high performance materials. The expansion for us has been one we have been waiting for because again being in a sold out market you want to be able to produce all you can. WE have at this point expanded locally all we can. The decision was made to explore placing another carbon fiber line equal to the one that we have currently here at our Greenville Site.

Wendy: That is wonderful news, now Cytech look at various other locations around the state, around the country I should say, what were the deciding factors to why you guys decide to expand here in Greenville in SC particular?

Don: Well, the reason for Greenville turned out to be, well one because we have a 40 plus year history her at Greenville, SC but we have a plant does extremely well. Has one of the most skilled work forces that we could ever find in any other location. The other thing we found that Greenville County, the Greenville state was very enthusiastic about helping us with everything we needed to make this expansion successful. The last piece, we have the best employees we have at any of our work sites are located right here at Greenville, SC so that was the ultimate reason for picking Greenville.

Wendy: That's awesome and were going to talk a little bit about various organizations that work together to bring you the work staff you are going to be getting later on. When is the expansion expected to begin?

Don: It actually has started the recruiting process for the engineering team which is going to be designing the expansion. The product will probably won't roll off the line until 2010 but there is a lot of work to be done between today and that date.

Wendy: And later on. And when would production going to start again.

Don: 2010

Wendy: 2010, got you

Wendy: Now you are going to be hiring different types of jobs for skilled as well as far as professional jobs. Tell us a little bit about some of those.

Don: Yes, the skill jobs that we will be hiring will be approximately 200 which doubles the size of our work force today even in that area. These people will be responsible for actually manufacturing the carbon fiber. The professional jobs will be engineers, accountants, and scientists, clerical and administrative types. It’s pretty much taking the current operation and duplicating that operation.

Wendy: Awesome. Now that is wonderful. Now Cynthia there was a lot of state and local agencies that played a role or working together to make Greenville an unbeatable location to keep Cytech here. Some of those I would like to mention GADC Center for Technology Training, Workforce Development and also Greenville Tech. Tell us how Greenville Technology, what role Greenville Tech will play in this expansion, how you will work together with those agencies in the expansion.

Cynthia- Right, We are excited to have this announcement by Cytech. And we are really excited in Greenville to have really have strong partnership among the workforce development partners. That would include an addition to Greenville Tech, the Center for Accelerated Technology Training, state part of, State Technology College System that supports new and expanding industries, the Work Force Investment Board and the Employee’s Security Commission. Those all play a role in attracting and supporting new and expanding industry. Greenville technology is the training partner. We provide the training. We do the employee assessments. We do just about anything to help the new employees be productive when they get to your job site or new expanded plant. In fact, we worked with Cytec last year. One of the things we did, you all added 60 people, we used work keys as an assessment tool, we did the job profiling, and did the assessment of the employees. Can I tell you a little bit about how we work with CAT and WIA and ESC?

Wendy: Sure

Cynthia: Well, when a company is adding employees or is brand new in town; obviously work force is the key to determine their success like Don has said and Greenville is truly blessed to have a committed work force, people who really like to work. That is a great thing to have. So you want to attract people and you want to select the right ones. In the recruiting process, both the one stop, and CAT can support with that effort, along with the Employee Security Commission. Then in terms of training folks, CAT helps to develop training programs. It can be done by a pre-employment or first employment basis. Frequently, Greenville Tech provides the trainers, some curriculum development. So we all join together and as efficiently and as collectively as positively as possible do what that unique employer needs. It is delightful to find we were able to influence in some way the decision for Cytech to expand here.

Wendy: Well, it is a great partnership for the agencies as you just described. Let’s talk a little bit about work keys. You said you use work keys in the expansion that you went through last year. Tell us about work keys and how we are going to use it again for this expansion.

Cynthia: Work Keys is a system that allows us to assess a person’s abilities to do a job, to learn a job as a matter of fact. In fact the state of SC through the Technical College System and through the Department of Commerce is recommending to employers that they adopt Work Keys as an assistant program. It helps you know that the person you are bringing into your organization can in fact master that job and grow with you. When you make a good hiring decision you have solved a lot of the retention problem right there. You don't have as much turn over so. In work keys we go and look at the jobs, we call a job profile. We are able to say what does it take to do this job and then we match that up with an assessment. The things we might be assessing might be the ability to locate information or reading skills, your math skills. And there are various levels of those skills and we match up the level of the skill with the job. So that different jobs would have different combinations of scores there. That's in fact what we did for Cytec is look at specific jobs and specific requirements to do that job and once we have that profile an applicant takes the assessment test and takes about 45 minutes for each module and be probably did three tests I believe with you all. Then we were able to say these candidates or the company is able to take a look at the total candidates list and know which ones are the right candidates are for them.

Wendy: And Don how did you find the Work Keys process was it useful? Was it beneficial to you?

Don: The process for us was very beneficial. For us it takes about a year to two years to train an employee. The purpose behind work keys for us is to try to identify those people who can actually reduce the training and the learning curve by knowing what they were able to learn and the speed in which they were able to learn. We found after using work keys that our selection process was so much better. I am happy to say we were actually able to maintain almost all the employees that we brought through the Work Keys.

Wendy: That’s wonderful

Don: But I think the most interesting part for me is when I told my peers we were doing this they kept telling me how difficult is going to be. For me Greenville Tech turned out to be one seamless operation. I did not know I was actually using Greenville Tech verses CAT because all I told them what my needs were and they seem to just fill those needs whether it was training needs or trainer needs because we actually use several trainers as well.

Wendy: Wonderful, thank you so much Don for sharing all the expansion information and certainly Cynthia also. And we’re just delighted that you are continuing to stay in SC and this is a great opportunity for us as far as an economical development perspective

Don: Absolutely

Wendy: so thank you and congratulations.

Don: Thank you

Wendy: Well that's going to do it for this edition of momentum. Thanks for watching and see you next time