25 May 2007 – On 25th May, the MAN Diesel PrimeServ Academy in Augsburg will be opening its doors. After nine months of construction work, the second-oldest building on the Augsburg industrial zone radiates modernity and will in future offer a generous 1,500 square metres of space for training courses, seminars and workshops.
MAN Diesel has invested Euro 2.5 million in converting the Academy - a clear affirmation of Augsburg’s importance as a business location, as Chairman of the Executive Board Dr. Georg Pachta-Reyhofen highlighted in his speech at the opening ceremony: “The MAN Diesel PrimeServ Academy in Augsburg is a step towards the future and an expression of our long-term activities. Through it, we are demonstrating our commitment to the city, the region and the people who work here.” For Dr. Stephan Timmermann, whose Executive responsibilities at MAN Diesel include the After Sales Business Unit and MAN Diesel I PrimeServ, training is a key issue: “Our pledge is to offer our customers all over the world a consistently high standard of quality. This self-imposed obligation is one we can only live up to if our employees undergo regular training and are familiarised with the latest technical details.”
The focus of the MAN Diesel I PrimeServ Academy lies partly on the internal advancement of the company’s own service engineers, who regularly arrive from all over the world at Augsburg in order to increase their expertise. The Academy also gears its training portfolio towards marine and power plant engineers, who are brought up to speed about diesel engines from MAN through basic, advanced and expert courses. Whenever an engine is sold, the customer is offered the opportunity to send his engineers to MAN Diesel for training. This is a service that the vast majority of customers avail themselves of. Harald Stark, Head of the MAN Diesel I PrimeServ Academy in Augsburg, also knows the alternative scenario: “Very often, customers come to us and ask us to provide training courses for their staff. So far, we’ve been training around 250 engineers a year.”
The four trainers at the MAN Diesel I PrimeServ Academy in Augsburg are long-serving employees of the company. Three additional trainer posts are already in the pipeline in order to offer new areas of focus. After all, technical advances are still ongoing, with diesel engines being just part of them. The role of electronics, for example, is growing and of course needs to be taken into account in the training courses provided.