PJL-35

Training Centre: training as an integral part of the company procedure

Since its inception, the Fabio Perini S.p.A. Training Centre has had the objective of contributing to developing the competencies of personnel working in the field of converting in order to enhance their technical knowledge of the machines.

Maura Leonardi

"Today, and all the more so, tomorrow, learning and working times can no longer remain separate, but they must, in part, overlap. The time for learning, furthermore, must be used for learning per se and for learning to work. The time to work must increasingly more often become also a time for acquiring the knowledge and the new and diverse capabilities necessary in order to keep oneself updated and to contribute both to one's individual development as well as to the competitiveness of the company.

In such a context, the answers supplied by the old Fordist1 paradigm that confined knowledge investment to limited spaces and times (research on the one hand and education on the other) are no longer sufficient.

Learning must be continuous, generative, but above all it must be inter-related with our cognitive and experiential structure.

Consequently, training - especially within the realm of a company - cannot be confined to places and times separate from working places and hours. The need to know cannot be satisfied with sporadic learning experiences that interrupt for a while (whether this be a brief or long period) one's working life. Instead, training must become continuous and distributed in capillary fashion during working times, immersed in and close to the areas of production, functional to generating new knowledge and new learning in a dynamic perspective of co-creation of new mind-sets."

I have deliberately begun this article with a courtesy translation of Massimiliano Costa, General Education Researcher at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice (Italy) and author of the book "Il Valore della Formazione Continua tra Complessità e Opportunità" (Value of Continuous Training: Complexities and Opportunities, c.t.), in order to underscore the importance of personnel training.

 

Expert operators in the converting industry represent today an important inexorable element in order to guarantee proper functioning of the machinery, foster working in safety and more greatly exploit the time element in the sphere of production. To sum it up: avoiding production problems that may create - in a frenetic setting such as the modern one - loss of production times and hence, loss of money.

It is true that "learning by doing" is useful, but if someone explains to us what we should do first, we learn even faster. And there are many experiments that confirm this theory. In a continuously and quickly evolving market, the entrepreneur's nose for business is no longer sufficient to guarantee good business. In order to be competitive, companies must know how to improve their organizational efficiency, to handle new opportunities, and develop the proper instruments that will allow to grow the value of experience and knowledge.

 

Fabio Perini S.p.A.'s dedicated Training Centre structure has always had the aim of contributing to training personnel who work in converting and of enhancing their technical knowledge in the realm of machinery. Working in safety, improving machine performance, enhancing and increasing employees' competencies, keeping operators constantly updated on new technologies and preparing specialized professional figures are just some of the aims established by the activities carried out by the Training Centre. Since 2003, the average number of days dedicated to training has increased from 270 to over 500 days in 2009, thanks to the intense activity of the team of trainers. Growing figures that highlight the exponential importance that companies - especially large-size companies - place in being able to count on a well-prepared workforce that is fully updated on new technology. The variety of course offerings presented by the Training Centre of Fabio Perini S.p.A. is a focus on excellence whose scope is to guarantee the entire sector an appropriate knowledge of the systems and one that favors the exchange of experience between theory and practice.

 

[1] The word Fordism is used to indicate a particular form of production based mainly on the use of assembly-chain technology in order to increment productivity. The term was coined in the 1930s to describe the success obtained in the automotive industry by the US industrialist Henry Ford.

 

Learn to Lead: learning in order to improve.

 

Learning in order to improve is the objective of the workshop organized by Fabio Perini S.p.A. and KPL Packaging S.p.A. in collaboration with A.Celli Paper S.p.A. and Industria Cartaria Pieretti S.p.A. The event stems from the desire to exploit the skills of the converting field: for two days, the competencies of four important companies in the field will serve as background to supply a complete vision of the entire production cycle. The event will be held at the Fabio Perini S.p.A. facilities in Lucca on 11 and 12 October, in the two days that precede the start of the MIAC Show. For further information, reservations, or to download the workshop agenda, please visit: http://www.fp.kpl.net/it/servizi/training.html

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