ICC Partners With Illinois Company For Industrial Maintenance Training

TUPELO, MISS. (WCBI) – A partnership between Itawamba Community College and an Illinois based company is expected to be a big boost to Mississippi’s skilled technical workforce.

As ICC President Doctor Jay Allen was signing a Memorandum of Understanding with Advanced Technology Services, a class on precision measuring was taking place at the opposite end of the Belden Center.

Under the partnership, ATS will provide skilled maintenance training at ICC Belden for its regional team, while opening the classes to other businesses and industries.

“Any type of manufacturing setting has industrial maintenance technicians, whether it be large scale, such as Cooper Tire, all the way down to smaller mom and pop furniture companies where there’s still a level of automation that occurs and there’s that need for maintaining that equipment throughout the year,” said Dr. Allen.

Part of the key role industrial maintenance teams play is their troubleshooting skills. That can help determine if product volumes are at or below a plant’s production goal.

ATS already had industrial maintenance teams in companies throughout Northeast Mississippi, so opening a training hub at ICC Belden was a logical step.

“We do the maintenance at Cooper Tire, and other local facilities in the area, Southwire in Starkville and Borg Warner in Water Valley, and we had decided to go to training hub style system when we were looking at Tupelo as a central region, we started speaking with ICC and started working with their agreement to bring our hub to this facility,” said Ben Patterson, with ATS.

For ATS the partnership with ICC Belden means there are now five training hubs around the country and for local manufacturers, it means the opportunity to have advanced training, locally, for its industrial maintenance technicians.

Additional ATS training hubs are located in Illinois, South Carolina and Texas.