PROJECT PROFILE:
Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia
Driving West Georgia's Economy
Project Summary: Just about any conversation about Georgia's automotive sector begins with one word: Kia. And for good reason.
In 2006, the West Georgia area had little manufacturing
left after the once-thriving textile industry moved overseas. But Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia (KMMG) took a chance and picked West Point, Ga., as the site to invest more than $1 billion on its first North American assembly plant, hiring 3,000 Georgians and putting countless more to work with the network of suppliers that followed it.
A small team of executives partnered with Quick Start from the outset, and mapped its strategy in temporary offices offered by West Georgia Technical College. Even while buildings were being constructed at KMMG, Quick Start had already designed, built and began operating the Kia Georgia Training Center, a 70,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility that was hailed by Kia's leadership as "the new global benchmark" for advanced automotive training.
Project Highlight: Select The Best
Unique Need: When Kia moved to West Point, they faced several unique challenges. Not least of these was finding thousands of qualified employees in an area that had very few manufacturing companies and getting them trained to proficiency in time to begin production.
Quick Start Solution: The first step of the process was creating custom software that handled a 100% online application process.
Kia sifted through tens of thousands of applications before inviting the top candidates to the newly built Kia Georgia Training Center.
Once there, production team member applicants went through 40 hours of assessments that included everything from written tests to assembling simple machines according to printed work instructions. These activities were designed to test the candidate's aptitude for work at Kia.
Soon, thousands of candidates had passed through Quick Start's rigorous assessment process designed to help KMMG "select the best."
Launching production in 2009, Kia's Sorento quickly became one of the most popular cars on the market and reaped one award after another.
In March, 2016, the 2 millionth car rolled off the line.
