1. Trainee Production Engineer
Plasmotec Limited
Trainee Production Engineer

2. Who are we?
Plasmotec is a well established UK company based on the Buckingham Road Industrial Estate in Brackley Northamptonshire.
We are an independent Company.
We have been in the business of injection moulding and tool making since 1989.
We operate and run 24 hours a day most of the week.
We supply a number of different industry sectors but primarily those loosely related to packaging.
We get involved with design and use computer aided software extensively.
We design and build tooling on site and get involved in prototyping and 3D printing as an aide to the design process.
We are a professionally run Company. This means we believe we properly run our business with suitable and sufficient attention to the detail of financial control, sales and marketing, manufacturing process control and not least training and development of a skilled and competent workforce.

3. What do we do?
We offer our clients a comprehensive service for all their plastic moulding needs.
We get involved with all aspects of the process – product design, tool design, tool manufacture, validation and optimisation and moulding products.
We deal with custom projects that require full design, tool making and manufacture.
We produce and sell standard products that can be bought in various quantities, colours and sizes to meet our customers’ needs.
Some of the key market sectors we serve are:
Food and Beverage packaging
General Packaging
Health and Beauty products
Non-invasive pharmaceuticals
Furniture components
Pet care products and packaging
Engineering components

4. Website www.plasmotec.co.uk
Our website shows our standard products and also explains our custom part process.

5. What do we want?
We are seeking enthusiastic and motivated individuals with an interest in engineering and manufacturing to join our trainee program.
We are looking for someone who can meet the following criteria:
A good educational background. Qualification could be successful completion of a relevant college course; "A" levels; good GCSE grades or similar. 
Good level of reading, writing and arithmetic.
Excellent attention to detail.
Keen to learn, develop, succeed and progress.
Naturally enthusiastic and ambitious as well as capable.
Someone who can work both on their own initiative and in a team.
Flexible, reliable and conscientious.
A good level of fitness as the role is physically demanding.
Show some bias towards manufacturing / engineering in educational achievements and/or hobbies and interests.
Someone who likes a hands on approach.
Committed to training.

6. Why do we want trainees?
We want to expressly ‘home grow’ our Process engineers of the future.
We want to internally generate managers and supervisors of tomorrow.
We want people who are skilled and properly trained.
We want people who know how to do the job properly and who can demonstrably do the job properly.
We want to grow our business.

7. Is it an apprenticeship?
It is not an official apprenticeship as there is no external qualification to be gained.
However the programme is very much focused on the acquisition of knowledge and skills in a practical way but with great emphasis on a formal training programme.
We believe any trainee that has successfully completed our training programme will notwithstanding have acquired a lot of skill and knowledge that will enhance their marketability.

8. What do we offer?
This position provides an attractive opportunity to enter a career in manufacturing with a real opportunity for the right person to develop and progress through the Company.
With significant emphasis on structured training across all departments trainees will learn from the ground up.
A Programme designed and structured around progression through the various elements of production such as, materials and stores management, recycling, supervision, machine operation, tool mounting, machine setting, process optimisation, validation and control, and process control
Broad and comprehensive introduction to manufacturing
Time spent in supporting departments undertaking relevant training in quality assurance; weighing, sorting and packing, printing & assembly, recycling and stores management.

9. Training plan
Each employee has their own training plan which is updated regularly and is used to help them build their skills and knowledge and control progress.
We keep a record of both the target date and the date the training was completed.
We are always reviewing training and updating it. It is clearly indicated when there is an updated issue of a training document.
Extensive use is made of feedback devices to ensure knowledge is retained and capable of application to the requisite standard.

10. Training
This is an extract from one of our training documents. We use a range of techniques such as using diagrams and colours so that our training is suitable for a range of audiences and it is adapted to different learning styles.

11. Training
We make extensive use of training feedback. Each training module has an accompanying feedback device expressively designed to ensure the module content is understood and can be applied. Just like with our training documents we use a range of different techniques.
Some other methods we use:
Multiple choice questions.
The individual shows via physical demonstration what they have learnt.
Going through processes verbally once the training has been done to check understanding.
Repetition to a given quality standard.
We use closed questions which may require a yes/no or, true or false answer.
We also include open questions where the individual must write an answer ,these can be both long and short.

12. Milestones Milestone Section
Within each section there will be training documents allocated to it that will need to be completed in order to progress.
The training program can be summarised into sections or functional areas that we call milestones.
Salary increases as progress through the milestones is achieved.
This training programme should take around 3 years to complete.

13. Trainee Progress Plan Number of modules
This chart tracks employees progression. The blue bars shows how many modules we expect an employee to have completed and the orange line shows where they are. Using this we can easily see if someone is on track and it ensures we can be quick to act if they fall too far below the expected line or indeed we can recognise out performance.