Maintaining the technological edge through local workforce collaboration

Napa County California has been a pioneer in Industry Cluster Analysis and has worked with a wide variety of industries to resolve identified needs with economical and achievable solutions. The Napa Workforce Investment Area has developed practical approaches to generate sustained interest from students and has incorporated this into its routine services thereby insuring a continuous supply of new practitioners and reducing costs to business. Career development, linking students directly with specific businesses and industries as well as tuition assistance have been provided to insure the continuation of a highly skilled workforce within the region. Letting industry set the agenda in problem solving forums has proved a valuable tool in resolving workforce retention and skill upgrade issues as well. A result of this collaborative effort has been the development of new curriculum and the opening of new Industry Schools to meet industry needs for training and retraining workers for new occupations within industries. In order to assist the various industries and individual businesses to meet changing technology and retention needs, Napa provides skill upgrade training to incumbent workers at no or reduced costs to businesses. Extending these practices to the field of Photo Optics is now a matter of formula.