How Ishida Drives Impact With 360Learning
Founded in Japan in 1893, Ishida is the leading manufacturer of weighing and packaging equipment for the global consumables market, with more than 3500 employees across the world.
As the first overseas subsidiary, Ishida Europe is headquartered in Birmingham, UK, and oversees 700+ employees spread across EMEA. With their incredibly diverse workforce—including frontline assembly teams, field service engineers, and sales staff—ensuring compliance in a highly regulated environment is no small task.
This case study explores how Ishida overcame their challenges in workforce skills development and compliance by introducing powerful automations that drastically reduced admin overhead, and set the stage for more proactive, strategic learning.
The Team
- Nicholas Taylor, L&D Manager, Ishida Europe
- Sarah Cash, Senior L&D Business Partner
- Jakub Kominka, Core Product Trainer
The Challenges
Ishida's seven-person L&D team includes specialist trainers for assembly, core product lines, and field services, and together they cover compliance, technical skills, and leadership development for more than 700 employees.
Before leveraging 360Learning, the team relied heavily on manual processes to execute the majority of their work, which seriously impacted their efficiency and business impact. These were some of the biggest challenges they faced.
1. Manual, Time-Consuming Administration
Before 360Learning, Ishida relied heavily on spreadsheets and a basic learning module in their HR suite—which couldn't keep up with the demands of their enterprise's size and complexity.
These technical limitations forced both the L&D and Health & Safety teams to manually track their training and compliance programs across 25+ spreadsheets. Overseeing admin for compliance certifications, like critical equipment operation licenses, was in itself an overly time-consuming task.
Coordination and record keeping was the toughest part of my job. We had five core machine products with endless variations, plus a global workforce—managing it all manually was nearly impossible. – Nicholas Taylor, L&D Manager
Nick's team wasted hours every week consolidating spreadsheets, chasing certificate renewals, and following up with multiple departments to confirm attendance.
The process quickly became unmanageable for a growing global workforce, especially when juggling in-person training schedules, attendee lists, and certificate renewals, causing confusion and missed deadlines.
2. Compliance Coverage That Struggled To Stay Audit-Ready
Operating in a heavily regulated industry, Ishida needs to keep strict records on training to stay audit-ready at all times. But teams felt like they were constantly playing catch-up in the old system.
Health & Safety certificates need to be renewed annually or tri-annually, and with no automated reminders or reliable reporting, employees and managers were only able to work reactively, with many workers either missing important recertifications, or finding out too late that their license had lapsed.
With a complex range of safety requirements—from crane operation to GDPR—the team lacked tools to ensure that 100% of their employees were up to date with compliance at all times. This risked not only regulatory noncompliance but also potential safety incidents on the shop floor.
3. Difficulty Scaling Frontline And Technical Training
As the company grew, it struggled to ensure consistent, timely upskilling for dispersed teams.
Ishida's frontline teams, such as assembly technicians and field service engineers, needed extensive hands-on training. And sales teams required larger blended learning programs that were up to nine months long with 50+ sub-trainings.
Before 360Learning, scheduling multi-session paths for these different learner groups was chaotic and inflexible—even something as routine as forklift training demanded a flurry of emails and manual sign-ups.
Because there were only synchronous training sessions, field service engineers stationed across different time zones couldn't consistently attend live training webinars, causing them to miss crucial updates when new parts or product lines were introduced.
On top of it all, limited LMS reporting meant managers lacked insight into how to best prepare or upskill new hires, leading to frustration and slow onboarding.
This all made it difficult to deliver consistent, timely upskilling across Ishida's globally dispersed workforce. Team members desperately needed on-demand learning materials they could easily reference on their own time.
As Nick explained, it was a challenge to get "the right people the right training at the right time"—especially for those who have 90% of training on the job but still need online documentation.
4. Limited Capacity For Strategic, Tailored L&D
Ishida has a wide portfolio of manufacturing products, operating in numerous sectors across EMEA. By nature, the company creates a vast amount of proprietary knowledge and skills. Much of the critical knowledge they needed to share bespoke short targeted learning resources (case studies, product updates, technical information, etc.) for specific regions and teams, rather than generic courses.
But despite the complexity and volume of resources needed, the central L&D team could only focus on manually creating large learning content for the masses, as learning needs were prioritized by audience size.
Between this, data entry, manual tracking, and email coordination, the L&D team lacked the bandwidth to focus on strategic development, which meant employee development and leadership programs were often put on the back burner.
Yet the need to create these programs and offer robust career pathways was more critical than ever, as Ishida's aging workforce of specialist engineers and technicians approach retirement. With no centralized system in place to capture and share their expertise, the organization risked losing critical know-how and proprietary skills.
The team knew they needed to invest more time in succession planning and skills frameworks to carve the path for internal mobility and build a more agile workforce, but it seemed impossible with admin tasks dominating their everyday workflow.
We were always playing catch-up. Between data entry, re-assigning trainings, and scheduling events, we couldn't focus on real development goals. – Nicholas Taylor
The Solutions
When evaluating potential LMS platforms, Nick's top criteria were robust automation, easy scheduling, reporting tools, and collaborative learning to capture expertise and knowledge from top performers.
360Learning stood out for its powerful path builder, automated enrollment logic, and collaborative learning elements that let managers and SMEs create and interact with content quickly.
Here's how Ishida tackled their biggest challenges using 360Learning.
1. Automated Enrollment And Tracking
Ishida leveraged 360Learning's audience builder to automatically enroll learners to training based on attributes that eliminated manual chasing for compliance. By setting up custom fields (e.g., job role, location, last certification date), every employee is automatically enrolled in relevant courses, and renewals trigger auto course re-assignments for upcoming expiring certifications.
Instant notifications and reminders in the platform also saved significant time, replacing back-and-forth emails. And learners could log in and see exactly which courses they had to take—no more ad hoc enrollment meant reduced confusion and user error.
The platform does so much heavy lifting—automating enrollments, reminders, and re-certifications—so we can actually focus on adding value elsewhere. – Nicholas Taylor
Notably, automation also enabled the L&D team to duplicate these proactive processes for the Health & Safety team, who now run custom reports on compliance status in minutes instead of shuffling through a multitude of spreadsheet tabs.
2. Centralized Compliance Dashboards
In conjunction with automated tracking, Ishida consolidated all mandatory training into a single portal. Monitoring upcoming expirations and tracking course completions is hassle-free and intuitive for both the L&D and Health & Safety teams.
Instead of sifting through spreadsheets to identify who needs a particular course, a real-time reporting dashboard shows who is due for a refresh, which sessions are running, and how many seats remain available.
Attendance sheets are automatically generated for both online and in-person training sessions, and once a training event is complete, administrators can upload certificates and finalize records in just a few clicks—and accessing previous records is just as easy.
In addition to easing both L&D and Health & Safety's workloads, this centralization has enabled both teams to work more proactively and boosted confidence during internal checks and external audits.
3. Streamlined Scheduling And Frontline Enablement
Today, Ishida's central L&D team is able to seamlessly create courses for the greater EMEA region at scale, using 360Learning's authoring tool and integrated language management tool to handle translations within the learning platform.
The team has launched a customized online learning library, using a blend of SCORM courses and targeted resources within the 360Learning platform, rather than off-the-shelf content.
Not only has this accelerated the training creation, it has also significantly increased the accessibility and amount of contextually relevant and useful information available on the platform, which has helped employees do their jobs better.
Case in point. For Ishida's frontline staff, this ability to blend hands-on and virtual learning under one system has been transformative. Field service engineers now have quick access to on-demand digital content, such as machine updates or troubleshooting guides, so they don't have to drop everything for live webinars that often conflict with customer site visits. Same goes for the sales teams on the road, who can now access key product information that's always up to date.
360Learning's classroom management tools have simplified the entire training process and enabled L&D to build and assign multi-session paths for any learner group at scale, whether they're new sales hires, assembly technicians, or advanced engineering roles.
Managers have also become strong advocates of 360Learning because it saves them time booking sessions and helps new hires ramp up faster.
Whether it's enrolling employees in on-site forklift training or embedding Zoom links in online courses, managers appreciate how easy it is to organize large-scale training sessions, coordinate training slots, and track their teams' progress—which has led to a stronger buy-in across different departments.
We run a nine-month sales path with over 50 elements—before it was a scheduling nightmare. Now, the path logic and automated invites keep everyone on track. – Nicholas Taylor
4. Reclaimed Capacity For Strategic Initiatives
By reducing administrative burden and streamlining content creation, Nicholas and his team now have the bandwidth for higher-value projects, notably laying the foundation to systematically capture institutional knowledge from their senior engineers and staff, and pass on proprietary skills.
This was a major priority for Ishida, as the organization relies on the technical expertise of their highly specialized workforce to succeed.
Decentralizing content creation has also played a pivotal role; 360Learning's collaborative learning platform enables their Subject Matter Experts to share their knowledge to by creating diverse and timely resource-based content, so employees can pull the information they need at any time, rather than wait for courses to be "pushed out" or assigned to them. Learning in the flow of work is now possible for all teams.
In parallel, Ishida has also begun implementing skills frameworks to map out precisely which competencies are needed across various roles and proficiency levels—a vital step in retaining and developing their highly specialized talent.
Using SkillsGPT by 360Learning to map out their skills ontology, Nicholas's team has already piloted a process of defining job descriptions and responsibilities, and scoring rubrics for multiple positions, including a new L&D Specialist role to take on Instructional Design and 360Learning platform ownership.
Ultimately, they want to sync these skill definitions with the platform's learning paths so employees can assess skills proficiency, identify what training they need, and immediately access relevant courses or resources.
This skills-based approach will not only preserve knowledge from their senior engineers, but also ensures that every employee—regardless of location or time zone—can grow their capabilities and progress within the organization.
We're no longer buried in admin tasks. Now we're finally able to create real pathways for technical upskilling, skills mapping, and leadership development. – Nicholas Taylor
The Results
With these new processes and frameworks firmly in place, the L&D team has seen real, measurable improvements to their organization's performance and efficiency. Here are some of the key results:
- 52% reduction in time spent on L&D admin. By eliminating manual data entry, automating enrollments, and streamlining scheduling, Ishida reduced admin workload by over half, freeing up the team to build strategic programs. Instead of chasing compliance, the team can plan development initiatives.
- 30% increase in compliance rates. Mandatory courses are now easy to find and complete, and automated reminders help learners stay on track well in advance of deadlines, helping Ishida stay audit-ready.
- 40 hours saved per month in L&D reporting. Manual spreadsheets are a thing of the past. Consolidated dashboards and auto-generated attendance sheets save the L&D team significant time month over month, enabling them to reinvest in proactive development initiatives.
- Greater buy-in from managers and learners. Managers love the simplified scheduling and clear visibility, and learners benefit from immediate access to relevant content and a more on-demand approach (i.e., if they hear about an update to a machine, they can jump in and learn async without a full-day disruption to their workflow).
- Reduced employee attrition. Employee retention has increased, particularly in the sales team, with more internal opportunities for greater career growth and opportunity.
What's Next
Having replaced the bulk of reactive tasks with automation, Ishida is setting its sights on:
- Skills development. Building comprehensive skills frameworks and linking courses to proficiency levels so employees can chart career paths.
- Deeper SME contributions. Empowering more Subject Matter Experts to create content directly in the platform—especially product managers and the technical arena, as this is where the greatest volume of knowledge risk sits (along with the greatest populations of employees).
- Blended management pathways. Continuing to roll out new leadership development programs that combine in-person workshops and eLearning within 360Learning's path system.
- Globalization and multi-language. Expanding localized training across French, German, and other EMEA regions to ensure consistent learning experiences for all employees.
Ready To Transform Your L&D Strategy?
By automating compliance and optimizing frontline training with 360Learning, Ishida Europe dramatically improved efficiency—allowing L&D to focus on strategic growth and employee development. Want to see how 360Learning can help your team do the same?
Request a personalized demo today and discover how our collaborative learning platform can empower your organization to upskill at scale.
