AN initiative targeted at businesses in Worcester has been launched by leading global management consultancy McKinsey & Company.

The Stratford-upon-Avon-based firm works alongside the world's largest companies with the aim of improving both their efficiency and performance.

For the first time ever, McKinsey & Company has launched an initiative to find Learning Partners for its business.

The company is offering its technical advice and on-site expertise to small and medium sized manufacturing companies in the area, and in return, a team of McKinsey & Company engineers - which includes top graduates from around the world - will gain experience on a "real world" project.

To demonstrate the advantage of taking part in the initiative, the company was set to hold a free seminar at the Jarvis Perry Hall Hotel in Bromsgrove, today, to which more than 3,000 businesses were been invited.

"For this initiative we wanted to work with smaller companies in the Midlands because we felt it would provide a better learning experience for our engineers," said Peter Willats, managing director of McKinsey & Company.

"This is the first time we've been involved in a local initiative like this, and it seems to have worked tremendously well so far, so we'd like to extend it.

"We take our experience and knowledge and put it into a training programme initially designed for our younger consultants but instead of doing it in a classroom, we do this is other peoples' factories."

McKinsey & Company hand-picks eight top engineering graduates from around the world to take part in a two-year training programme with the company.

As part of the new initiative, the consultants take part in 16-week sessions to learn about designing and installing production systems within a factory environment under the guidance of three experienced training instructors.

"Not only are our consultants there to learn, but the Learning Partner businesses also learn through the instructors and their working practices can be improved beyond recognition," said Mr Willats.

"Our students start in a pragmatic way by working on the production line so this initiative is not a secret consulting project, purely a learning experience."

He added the company already had a lot of Learning Partner businesses but wanted to encourage more people to join up.

"We're specifically looking for people in the West Midlands area because the students are all living locally and we want them to be within driving distance of their home," said Mr Willats.