The Ajax Generator Corporation of America is merging its operations with the Lobo Generator Corporation of Peru, South America. Both companies are privately owned and manufacture and sell power generators to companies that want an emergency backup electrical power supply for their operations. For example, telephone companies need backup power to keep the phone system running when the electricity goes out. The presidents of the companies are old friends and both want to create a truly international company that will sell to markets throughout the world. They both strongly and sincerely believe that having people from both companies with different cultures and backgrounds working together will give them a competitive advantage and that it will make an exciting and unique work environment for their people. They are both extremely loyal to their people and there is very little turnover in their companies – people like working for them.

After the merger is complete, each company will only manufacture the parts where they have the greatest strength. They will both assemble components into a final product. So Ajax will manufacture some parts and ship to Peru and Lobo will manufacture parts and ship to Ajax. Consequently both Ajax and Lobo will assemble product with parts from both companies.

You are part of a consulting group that has been hired to help make the merger work. Your specific area of responsibility is to develop and implement an overall training and education program that will facilitate the merger and to establish the foundation for continuous training in the future once the merger has been completed. Other people in the consulting group are developing a state-of-the art intranet that the merged company will use for all internal operations, administration, management, and communication functions. Both presidents are strongly committed to education and training and believe that their intranet should be leveraged for training in the long term.

Your role is to focus on the manufacturing divisions of each company. Also both companies currently have strong training organizations and use their own model of instructional development. They are staffed with experienced instructional designers. You must to create a plan for developing, and implementing a training program for engineers and first line managers in the manufacturing organizations of both companies. Given the strong commitments to training you can assume that you will have the necessary resources and the assistance of any person (engineers, manager, instructional designer, etc.) within either company in order to complete your project.

Before you present your initial plan to the other members of your consulting group, you need to think through the problem and outline a possible course of action. Complete the relevant sections of the RESPONSE PLAN OUTLINE to indicate how you would proceed in addressing this problem.