How to Train Your Maintenance Team on Industrial Automation Systems

This article explains how plant and maintenance managers can train their teams using modern tools.

Before I explain how to train your maintenance team, I want to quickly talk about the value of training for companies and engineers.

The value of training

All manufacturing companies should provide training for their employees. This training can be used to onboard new employees and to keep existing employees’ skills up to date.

Training is particularly important now because there is a growing skills gap in the industry. If you have tried to hire recently, you may have noticed that there is a shortage of skilled workers available in the manufacturing industry.

This gap is only getting larger. A recent Gallup survey predicted that in 2025, 2.7 million people will retire from the manufacturing industry and that 2 million of these jobs will go unfilled.

As older, experienced engineers retire, the younger generation will have to be trained up to take on the duties and responsibilities of these retirees.

As you can see, companies providing training for employees actually benefit the company as much as the employee.

A good training program helps to improve productivity by reducing mean time to repair and reducing unplanned downtime risk since trained staff are more able to detect abnormal situations and troubleshoot issues quickly.

A good training program also helps to improve staff retention. Since employees see that the company is investing in them and providing opportunities to grow, they are less likely to leave.

Now that we know the value of training, let’s look at some of the barriers that prevent companies from investing in traditional training.

Issues with traditional training

One of the main reasons why companies don’t provide training for their staff is because traditional training for industrial automation is expensive.

A typical four-day on-site training costs around $2500.

And that’s before factoring in the cost of hotels, meals, and flights.

There are also indirect costs involved with traditional training. A group of engineers have to leave the site for a week. This can affect productivity at the site and may increase the risk of downtime since there are fewer people available for maintenance activities.

So how can companies provide training to their staff in a cost-effective way that doesn’t affect productivity or introduce downtime risks to the business?

RealPars Business

RealPars is a modern training platform that gives employees access to training on demand. Using RealPars, maintenance teams can access high-quality content covering a range of topics, brands, and technologies whenever they have time.

This enables employees to learn the skills they need to be productive at their own pace, without needing to leave the site for large blocks of time.

All of our courses are made up of high-quality videos that explain concepts and build skills through detailed tutorials.

All of our students’ learning is reinforced through interactive quizzes and practical exercises to ensure that they can apply the skills that they are learning in real-life situations.

Many of our courses are developed in partnership with and certified by world-class manufacturers like Wago, Phoenix Contact, and ifm.

If you want to learn more about the courses in partnership with these manufacturers make sure to check out realpars.com/courses. under brands, you can filter for the names of brands you want to learn about.

For example, you can filter for Wago and start with CODESYS 1: Introduction to PLC Programming in the CODESYS series. Under the Phoenix Contact brand, start with the course named PLCnext Ladder Logic Programming for Beginners.

You can also check the ifm brand to see the available course named IO-Link Essentials: Accelerating Towards Industry 4.0. Complete those courses and earn a certificate from mentioned brands.

As part of a RealPars Business membership, managers get access to a dashboard where they can manage their team’s learning.

Using this dashboard, managers can set training goals for employees, review how well they have understood the materials, and make sure that employees have enough time available to focus on allocated training.

For maintenance teams, RealPars Business is a no-brainer. By training your maintenance team with RealPars Business, you can;

• Lower your training costs to a predictable amount with an annual billing schedule,
• Reduce travel expenses since all training is available on-demand through our online platform,
• Manage your team’s learning through a single dashboard, and
• Improve productivity at your plant by ensuring that your team has the skills they need to work effectively.

Wrap-Up

In this article, I have introduced RealPars Business and the benefits that it can bring to maintenance teams.

If you would like to learn more about RealPars Business, head over to realpars.com/business to learn more about how you can train your team with RealPars Business and reduce downtime at your plant today.

Here’s a list of the courses we mentioned in this blog post:

• Course #1: CODESYS 1: Introduction to PLC Programming in the CODESYS series
• Course #2: PLCnext Ladder Logic Programming for Beginners
• Course #3: IO-Link Essentials: Accelerating Towards Industry 4.0

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