Wiseman puts skills training centre stage

Training programmes at Robert Wiseman’s dairy sites have been designed to establish procedural excellence, avoiding the concept of operating knowledge as a ‘black art’ transmitted by veteran workers, according to Halo Support Services.

The firm was called in to tutor engineers in the use of Wiseman’s automation systems across five UK sites, using video, animation and audio commentary. Engineers were schooled in efficiently diagnosing and correcting faults in the systems, with the aim of reducing downtime and improving profitability.
“The benefits included getting consistent operating procedures, which you often find are a black art in factories,” said Halo md John Craig. “They’ll say, ‘Fred knows all about that’. The problem is that if ‘Fred’ doesn’t know the most efficient way of doing something, overall efficiency will degrade imperceptibly over time. The benefit of multimedia training is there is no way of misinterpreting it.”
Much of Halo’s training could be delivered on the job as well, which was useful for employers looking to get new staff up to speed as quickly as possible, said Craig.
After providing its engineering training, Halo was called on to provide operator training for Wiseman’s latest site in Bridgwater. “It was the first time we had completed a project of this size on a greenfield site,” said Craig.
Halo led staff through raw milk processing, including standardisation, pasteurisation and homogenisation, and the supervisory control and data acquisition system used at Bridgwater in detail.
Other modules included safe storage, milk processing and distribution, cleaning-in-place procedures and filling hall practices such as how to operate machines and handle changeovers.
The entire training process took two years, with almost half that time spent tailoring the training content specifically to Wiseman’s needs, said Craig.