The Heidelberg training programmes have commenced with 99 young people beginning their training and cooperative education degrees at one of the company’s four sites in Germany.
In line with the Heidelberg Goes Digital strategic orientation, the company is focusing its training on the issue of the digital transformation. Heidelberg says the company is providing mechatronics engineers with targeted training in using the View2Connect virtual collaboration and communication platform, which facilitates completely digital assembly planning among other features. Digital workstations for trainees in various corporate departments are planned for the future.
Heidelberg is in the middle of a massive strategic reorientation, with the world’s biggest offset press manufacturer now in partnership with both Fujifilm and Ricoh, as it seeks to position itself for the new digital era. It looks certain to release the world’s first B1 sheetfed digital inkjet press. It remains the world’s biggest offset press manufacturer, but the market size is at a fraction of its pre-GFC level.
[Related: Heidelberg sales grow, orders drop]
From November 2017, Heidelberg will again give young people, including asylum seekers, the opportunity to take up one of twelve places as part of a collectively agreed sponsorship year. The aim of this collectively agreed sponsorship year set up by the metal and electro industry in Baden-Wuerttemberg is to create new training and employment options for young people in need of support, by means of appropriate patronage and sponsorship measures.
Ruppert Felder, Head of Human Resources at Heidelberg says, “The trend towards increasing digitisation is becoming more and more evident in a large number of professions. With the various tasks in practically all corporate departments, we work together with the vocational colleges and the Cooperative State University Mannheim to facilitate a thorough understanding of digital process workflows. We invest in the next generation and, in doing so, create a sustainable foundation for Heidelberg in the context of the digital transformation.”
In addition, all commercial/technical trainees at Heidelberg are now trained at a Learning Factory 4.0 at the vocational colleges in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan area. This is a project supported by the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg to foster digital expertise.
The company’s largest training site is Wiesloch-Walldorf. It currently has a total of 235 trainees and students, including the 67 who are part of this year’s intake. From last year’s collectively agreed sponsorship year, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan has been successfully accepted onto the new training program. He is about to start his traineeship as a print media technologist. In total, Heidelberg now employs approximately 300 trainees and students at the sites in Wiesloch-Walldorf, Brandenburg, Amstetten and Ludwigsburg.
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