Plastics Training: February 2012 Archives

It would be beneficial to have the technicians and die setters participate in a few mold PMs. This would give them a first-hand view of the maintenance required and an appreciation of how much effort is required to care for the tools.

We recommend a small amount of cross training for most of your employees in the roles of those around them including quality, material handling, and even maintenance. This will give them an appreciation of the roles of those working around them.

-Andy

It is common to believe that advanced training will automatically cause your employees to function at a higher level. Unfortunately, advanced training does little to change behavior if your employees lack a good understanding of the fundamentals. A great example of this is the decoupling of 1st stage filling from 2nd stage packing.

Let's presume you have a technician who has been filling the mold completely during 1st stage fill for the past 15 years. Now you send this  person to a class focused on the finer points of optimizing filling and packing based on the foundation of a short shot during first stage fill. This employee would learn very little which is directly applicable to his job since he still believes filing the mold completely during 1st stage fill is the best way to process.

-Andy