Paper-based ILT for Georgia-Pacific Mills

In my first career role, I was PM and ID for a board mill at a Georgia-Pacific plant. The overall project included most of the plant from pulp mill to various tissue and paper mills. I managed the budget and timelines for lessons within the board mill, and later, a fine paper mill. As an ID I traveled to the plant for 1-2 weeks at a time to research multiple lessons. I developed paper-based ILT courses and assessments. The paper-based/audio lessons went with standup classes taught by operators/SME’s.

Lessons included flow and components, operation, startup, shutdown, emergency procedures, maintenance, and troubleshooting.

At this time (1994-ish), CBT was still pretty new, as were most computer functions in general. I developed paper lessons that only had blank pages for illustrations. I handed off go-bys to a graphic artist who developed graphics using CorelDraw. Finished graphics were printed, cut out, and pasted onto the printed final version of the paper files, along with any photographs. Once all the graphics and photos were pasted into the lesson, it was sent off to a color printing service that printed the number of lessons required.

I had great mentors at this time, and my early lessons “bled” heavily with red ink from their edits. They got me to be a proficient technical writer quickly.

Lessons I completed for the board mill were:

• Fourdrinier

• Press Section

• Vacuum

• Dryers

• Calender

• Sym Sizer

• Starch System

• LAS Curl Control System

• Fischer Provox Controls

• Winder

• Wrapper

• Reel

At the tail end of the board mill project I repeated the PM/ID role for a fine paper mill. For that mill I completed the following lessons:

• Press Section

• Dryers

• Calender

• Starch Unloading

• Sym Sizer

• Winder

• Reel

• Lap Machine (old machine from 50s that made a thick rough board)

In addition I worked lessons for the tissue mill, power house, bleach plant, converting, and shipping facilities.