To support the training of its own employees as well as its customers, SKF has now opened an SKF College in Elgin, IL. It is the fifth in a series of global training centers that SKF has been establishing over the past several years. The North American center in Elgin provides professional development, as well as technical training for both employees and customers. It complements centers that have been established in Europe, India and Asia. The most recent two centers opened this fall in Shanghai, China and Pune, India.

The inaugural training event was held November 7, 2006 and featured the CEO and president of SKF, Tom Johnstone at the ribbon cutting, who stated: "SKF, as it grows to become the Knowledge Engineering Company, must also grow the capacity of its people in several key areas of technical and business competence. We have decided to run our own SKF Colleges in different parts of the world to ensure we can train our own people as well as our customers and distributors in the necessary technologies and other competencies to ensure we can offer the market the best solutions," continued Johnstone. "Now we have such SKF Colleges in five countries including the United States. Our experience from the colleges already working is extremely good and, in priority markets like North America, it is very important to ensure that SKF can provide this training."

George Dettloff, president of SKF North America was on hand to represent the SKF USA organization and congratulate employees on having the campus in Elgin. Eva Handsdotter, senior vice president of Human Resources & Sustainability added comments of congratulations following Tom Johnstone’s address. Dennis Dinkins, president of Sealing Solutions Americas, and representing other business units spoke of the support the opening had received from all North American divisions.

Courses being conducted during the initial week included the new Value Through Knowledge program, recently added to the SKF College offering, Design for Six Sigma and Zero Loss. Attending this week’s sessions were SKF employees from the USA, Canada, Mexico and Europe.

The Elgin Learning Center is headed by Wally Brodeur, manager of Competence Development, and features all the technology needed for world-class instruction. Employee courses for 2007 will include 10 of the current SKF College’s catalog such as Managing Across Cultures, Motivating in a Matrix Organization, Lubrication and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. For customers, the center will continue to include its popular seal competence training courses while adding bearing courses offered in a sequence of three levels.

For more information about SKF, visit www.vsm.skf.com.