Training Maintenance Staff of the Future (Part III)

The three-part series of articles investigates the various aspects of maintenance and its importance today. Part I focused on the historical development of maintenance. The topic of Part II was the role maintenance plays in Salzgitter Flachstahl’s production processes. This crucial task requires highly qualified personnel, however. In Part III we provide an insight into how training prepares budding industrial mechanics and electronics engineers for their future tasks.

The career of a maintenance expert in the integrated steelworks generally starts off with Antonius Hanuschik or Michael Schneider. These two managers of metal working and electrical training at Salzgitter Flachstahl GmbH already know who will be securing the production and plant availability in their company in the years ahead: young women and men who are about to embark on their training as industrial engineers or electronics technicians. And this is because: “Around 90% of all annual training programs offer the prospect of a permanent job working for our company,” says Michael Schneider, head of Electrical Engineering and Vocational Training. In the training workshop, young women and men initially spend around a year acquiring the fundamentals of their future profession, knowledge which they go on to deepen in specialist courses during the second year of their training. They can then prove themselves in practice on site.

“Future industrial engineers then go through maintenance apprenticeships as from the second or the third year of training,” reports Antonius Hanuschik, head of Vocational Training in Metal Working. In the “Maintenance and Plant Technology” course, they perform maintenance and repair machinery in the training workshop such as on drilling, milling or lathe machinery and familiarize themselves with maintenance schedules and manufacturer specifications for maintenance and inspection. “These activities give them very detailed exposure to conditions that they will later find when they practice their professions,” Antonius Hanuschik says. In the “Workshop in the Workshop”, trainees work largely independently on carrying out genuine tasks commissioned by operations such as the coking plant or the steelworks. The practical orientation of both courses provides them with valuable experience to take into the companies.

It is important to find suitable junior staff for maintenance. “Over the months of the pandemic, conditions have become more difficult because career guidance in practice or at the vocational fairs such as Hanover’s IdeenExpo could not take place as usual,” says Anke Peinemann, head of Vocational Training at Salzgitter Flachstahl GmbH. Michael Schneider has nevertheless detected another aspect that the Group can use to score points: “We have seen that our Group’s commitment to low CO2 steel production has not gone unnoticed by applicants. Young people find this important and will include it in their deliberations and decisions in our favor.”