Create New Training Opportunities

Simlog Products do more than help train heavy equipment operators. They also create new training opportunities. How ? By fostering new industry-education partnerships!

Making the Business Case Contact Simlog

Consider the case of local employers who are owner/operators of heavy equipment struggling with recruitment problems. Unable to find enough qualified operators, they turn to their local vocational training institute or community college. But the school has no heavy equipment operator training program, and can't shoulder the financial burden of buying and maintaining real iron. Of course, the local employers have real iron but dedicating their production resources (people and equipment) to training represents a different kind of financial burden. That's because coming up to speed at the controls of heavy equipment is so slow, so costly, and can put people at risk. But when Simlog's Personal Simulators enter the picture, they make it possible for the school to leverage its existing infrastructure to create new operator training programs with the financial help of the local employers. (The same simulators can also be used to help recruit your instructors, just like owner/operators who use their Simlog products to qualify proficiency when hiring new operators.) The resulting industry-education partnership typically takes the following form: Students begin at the school, learning "about" heavy equipment and learning to master key operating skills in a simulated setting. Practically, the school provides the classrooms, hires the instructor(s), and recruits the training candidates, often with the help of the local employers. After the students demonstrate sufficient simulator-based proficiency, they graduate to works terms of limited duration at the controls of the local employers' heavy equipment. Since the students now arrive so well prepared, they come up to speed more quickly, more cheaply, and especially much more safely than they ever could before. (Remember that the worst accidents now take place in the simulated world.) And that's how everyone wins: The local employers now have new heavy equipment operators to hire. The local school has a new heavy equipment operator training program. Taken together, the employers and the school have created new well-paying, long-term, job opportunities for the young people in their local community. Here's one article about such an industry-education partnership: "Heavy Mettle UTC: Students use construction equipment simulators to move 'earth'!" (PDF file), Bangor Daily News, March 20, 2007. © 2007 Bangor Daily News. All rights reserved. To learn more, contact Simlog today!