KTH facility running at full production

Hiring more employees

From Urbana Daily Citizen

KTH Parts Industries, Inc., is running at full production, with many Saturdays scheduled for the remainder of this year, thanks to “robust high sales demands” in the automotive sector, reports Chris Millice, KTH’s senior vice president of general administration.
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Champaign County’s largest employer, KTH is one of the largest Tier 1 automotive suppliers in the U.S., employing more than 1,100 associates in a 1.068-million-square-foot complex west of St. Paris. KTH makes underbody structural frame components for cars, with Honda its top customer.

KTH also has been busy on Sundays, hosting open interviews to fill 40 to 50 open production positions. Millice recently shared with the Champaign Economic Partnership (CEP): “The availability of candidates to fill these positions is very limited. We have been advertising these positions by radio, social media and news publications.”
KTH is a Champion Level investor in the CEP, which is Champaign County’s economic development agency.

“Good news like this is very encouraging, especially during the pandemic,” says CEP Director Marcia Bailey. “In Champaign County we’re very fortunate to have a diverse mix of businesses and employers like KTH that are growing, looking to the future and providing new jobs for area residents.”

While keeping up with demand, KTH also has been closely following CDC guidelines to protect its workforce, Millice said. This includes:

· Facial coverings, sanitizing and social distancing
· Moving some workstations or placing barriers between workstations to ensure proper distancing
· Requiring face shields and masks for associates who work in processes where social distancing cannot be accommodated
· Hiring personnel whose full-time job is to wipe down high-traffic areas several times a day
· Emphasizing that associates stay home when they are not feeling well
· Restricting all non-essential visitors from entering the plant
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“At KTH we pride ourselves on our dedicated workforce, which is one of the best in the industry, as we work through labor demand constraints and follow COVID safe practices,” Millice says.