A way to solve the shortage of skilled maintenance pros
Staff -- Purchasing, 12/9/2004 2:00:00 AM
When a customer told Anne Spano—director of customer training at Applied Industrial Technologies—that he expected to lose 50% of his company's skilled maintenance workforce in the next five to 10 years, it was the catalyst for a program that has turned into a value-added opportunity that has enhanced the capabilities that the industrial distributor can offer its customers.
Now in its third year, MaintenancePro Technical Training—a technical training program for maintenance, operations and other plant personnel—is designed to help customers maintain a highly skilled workforce. "With the economic downturn, customers were telling us they were losing skilled workers to attrition and early retirement," says Bill Purser, president and chief operating officer of Cleveland-based Applied Industrial. "Our customers felt that [their] young workers needed to be quickly brought up to speed" in order to reduce the probability of costly equipment downtime and repairs.
To develop the program, Spano initially conducted a survey not only of customers, but also suppliers and internal Applied personnel. In addition to seeing a tremendous appetite for such a program and getting a slew of suggested course topics, she learned that "customers didn't want their employees spending time away from their jobs attending classes." As a result, Applied holds its training sessions in regional locations, at its distribution centers (or nearby hotels) and, when feasible, at customer sites.
MaintenancePro courses cover such topics as fluid-power fundamentals, basic industrial hydraulics, advanced industrial hydraulics, lubrication technology, bearing maintenance and fundamentals, and power-transmission technology. The courses provide attendees with practical information on maintenance, troubleshooting, component application and failure analysis.
Courses are taught by qualified professionals in the field. While the instructors use products sold by Applied to demonstrate technique in the classes, both Purser and Spano stress that the distributor does not use the sessions to sell its suppliers' products. Applied's suppliers are not involved in the course work. Technical documentation and reference materials are provided.
All training includes pre- and post-course assessments. Upon successful completion of each course, attendees receive certificates identifying the number of Continuing Education Units (CEUs) earned for the course.
The training is fee-based. For example, a 16-hour advanced industrial pneumatics course, costs $695 per person.
Training is available in either English or Spanish, to reflect changing demographics near some customer locations. Applied currently has scheduled courses for February and March at locations in California, Georgia, Texas and Massachusetts.
Looking ahead, Applied is adding a course on motors and drives to the curriculum and is considering classes on soft skills. The distributor also is thinking about expanding the program to locations in Canada and Mexico.
For more information, contact Applied at applied@maintpro.com or call (866) 664-5733.
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