Czech carmaker and VW subsidiary, Skoda Auto, has invested €600,000 ($760,000) in three new training centres at its Kvasiny plant, which will be used to train employees in logistics, vehicle body assembly and paintshop.
The investment falls within the remit of the Skoda Growth Strategy, by which the carmaker aims to increase worldwide sales through production improvements to at least 1.5m units per year, until the year 2018.
“Our growth course will make high demands on our employees in the coming years,” said Michael Oeljeklaus, Skoda’s board member for Production and Logistics.
“At all manufacturing sites, we will build considerably more cars than in the past. That requires a well-trained and qualified team perfectly mastering the manufacturing processes in every regard. The targeted professional instruction in our training centres will ensure this qualification in a sustained manner and is, therefore, an essential component in our growth strategy,” he added.
Detailing the logistics training on offer, a spokesman for the company told Automotive Logistics News that the focus is on “internal logistics activities starting with the unloading of goods”, with training modules focusing on areas including systems for restocking, repackaging of parts, sequencing, stock cycling and stacking.
The logistics training centre has been built on 1,000 square metres of greenfield land at Kvansiny and all training equipment has been newly installed.
Skoda has a network of training centres at its various production locations. The three Czech plants – at Kvasiny, Mladá Boleslav and Vrchlabí – as well as the Indian plant at Aurangabad have what the company terms ‘lean centres’, as well as training centres for logistics, body and engine production, assembly and paintshop. In 2011 alone, approximately 6,000 employees were trained across a total of 13 centres.
Construction for a new €5.3m ‘Skoda Lean Centre’ at the main plant in Mladá Boleslav began in mid-December last year.
The move is part of a wider plan to expand activity at the plant by mid-2012 with the addition of a third model to the Fabia and Octavia bestsellers.
Between January and December 2011, Skoda sold 879,200 vehicles worldwide (2010: 762,200), with deliveries to customers up by around 116,000 units.
