Training Winners

Innovative learning methods sustainably secure knowledge

In business as in sports: only intensive training can produce top performance. Together with first-class machines and processes, it is the depth of expertise acquired by its employees that will enable a company to obtain the decisive added value.

To this end, manroland as “Personal Trainer” offers its customers and their sales network Value Added Knowledge programs for beginners and advanced student staff. An innovative three-pillar method provides the right mixture of theory and practice for sustainable knowledge: self-study, intensive practical lessons, refreshers via e-learning. This multistage interlinked training concept serves employees to build up condition – and sustain it.

Ideally, training starts with the installation of a new press. In this way, press operators and maintenance personnel as well as specialists for process and printing technology or prepress learn all they need to know about operation, mechanics, electronics and technology. In the process, they are taught not only proper and effective handling of the press but also specific operations that enable them to carry out repairs on their own if necessary. Specific courses in selling, service and management round out the curriculum offered. The various training modules can be composed to form a customer’s individual personnel development plan as well as for training the manroland Market Organization or Sales and Service Partners.

Personal customer personnel training
At the Group Mercator Press commercial web printing company headquartered in Belgium and France, a holistic analysis conducted during the first quarter of 2008 explored the fundamental question: where are we, where do we want to go? Two manroland PRINTVALUE sectors joined hands in this project. printservices checked the equipment of the existing LITHOMAN and ROTOMAN printing sys-tems. Where they didn’t sufficiently meet the customers’ requirements and the possible strategic reorientations of the Group, the experts recommended appropri-ate technical upgrades; printadvice vetted the processes and speeded up their execution. The Training Center in Augsburg analyzed the personnel structure as to the employees’ existing level of skill and the desired expertise.

This resulted in a detailed training plan for 23 employees, from prepress through to management, for a period of 18 months. Self study was followed by the first practical lessons on site. Some 20 press operators divided into three groups practiced production processes on control console simulators in virtual reality for five days per group. To maintain the learning curve, the new knowledge is now regularly added to via e-learning in virtual classrooms or with interactive homework. Jaques Carney, Group Mercator Press, is enthusiastic about it after the initial training sessions: “Experimenting at the simulators was especially intensive and effective for the participants in the course. And the virtual classrooms are ideal. Now all questions arising at work during the day can be solved afterwards.”

In use worldwide
In the Sheetfed Business Sector, the requirements for manroland are different due to the worldwide sales activities via Market Organization or Sales and Service Partners. Analysis at the customer is mostly done by via the local representatives. Only after the concrete needs have been determined will detail planning commence at Sales & Service Training in Offenbach. Predominantly in demand among customers as well as the Market Organization and Sales and Service Partners are the special product training courses, 65 in all. After the preliminary studies, the choice for intensive practical training is between the Training Center in Offenbach, customers’ own systems or simulators and exhibits at the offices of local representatives.

If English is not sufficient, interpreters help to overcome language barriers. But the worldwide application of the training concept in each case also challenges the intercultural versatility and sensibility of the trainers. In 2007 alone, the product trainers conducted 282 courses for 1,220 participants from 53 different nations. In the USA, the “Train-the-Trainer” principle is being installed. Once trained, “Senior Technicians” of the Market Organization will eventually, in own courses, convey to their customers exactly the same contents according to the Offenbach method. This supports closeness to customers, in both spatial and personal terms.

The Value Added Knowledge training concept

• Standard seminars – the fast and reliable road to comprehensive competence
• High practical content – faster accomplishment with Learning by Doing.
• Printing simulator – the production process in virtual reality.
• E-learning – effectively learning at high flexibility.
• Virtual classroom – knowledge transfer and individual instruction by pushbutton.
• Personnel development – to company-specific needs.
• Special seminars – individual training to personal needs.