Festo Germany recently created an international training partnership with Inergy Automotive. A number of English-speaking countries were selected as pilot countries to start hydraulics training sessions, one of which was South Africa. A customised hydraulics course was conducted for the local Inergy office by the highly experienced Festo Didactic trainer, Charles Eckley. The course was structured to address the following topics, as required by Inergy Automotive:
* Basic hydraulics.
* Safety when working with hydraulics.
* Proportional hydraulics.
* Hydraulic maintenance and problem solving.
* Plastic blow moulding machines specific to the equipment used at their premises.
“It was very important to start with the basics to ensure that we got the best results from the training,” explains Lourens. “The training was 50% theory and 50% practical and therefore not just reading the book and listening to a trainer but going to the next step of practical connection exercises on the test banks.” Festo transported training rigs and set them up at Inergy’s premises.
The pilot project test results indicated that the average knowledge of the participants at Inergy Brits had increased from 51% to an average of 82%, with the lowest score increasing from 29% to 70%. “We are pleased that such positive feedback was received from Inergy,” concludes Eckley. Based on these results, Inergy’s German headquarters has decided to do an international roll-out of the Didactic project to the rest of the Inergy plants worldwide.
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