Volkswagen has a mission: making e-mobility affordable for everyone. To fulfill it, Volkswagen is currently transforming itself into the leading provider of electromobility. To do so, the company is preparing its employees for new production methods and jobs that will emerge due to increasing electrification, the new MEB (“Modular Electric Toolkit”) vehicle architecture, and increasing automation of the production process.
Biggest qualification program, ever
At the Zwickau plant, Volkswagen will train almost all of the 7,700 employees between 2019 and 2021 for the production of electric vehicles. The expense is immense – but justified. Ultimately, Zwickau will take the lead in production of e-models.
Employees learn new work procedures for the production of electric vehicles, also with the aid of industrial robots.
The plant in the part of Zwickau called Mosel: Volkswagen completely converts it into a production location for e-cars.
At the Zwickau location, Volkswagen is currently launching the biggest qualification and training offensive in its history. Nearly all of the staff at the site – 7,700 in all – will be prepared for the important task of ensuring timely and high-quality production of the first purely electric vehicles at the plant in late 2019.
The training and courses are being conducted according to a fixed plan. The training components are as follows:
Production of the Passat Variant in Zwickau will soon cease, to be followed by electric vehicle production. Employees are learning the new procedures as they continue to work.
– 3,000 employees will receive basic e-mobility skills. This two-day training unit primarily applies to assembly workers. The course is held in-house and utilizes virtual reality (VR) and virtual assembly training (VMT) technologies.
– 3,500 employees will receive what are known as product training courses. This encompasses about 300 training topics such as operating concepts, test procedures and driver assistance systems.
– 160 employees will receive so-called high-voltage (HV) training. This lasts for up to 18 weeks and culminates in one of three certificates: managerial electrical specialist (vEFK), electrical specialist (EFK) and electrical specialist for specified activities (EfffT).
– 1,400 employees will receive high-voltage awareness training.
– 60 employees will become technical specialists for electronics/electrics. Topics of this course of up to 24 months include, among others networking, product and process planning, and data management.
A 200-square-meter high-voltage laboratory with electric training vehicles was set up for the training courses. With the aid of digital training and VR glasses, employees here are also trained in close proximity to the real product and real production processes from an early stage.
This education program is being implemented in cooperation with the Volkswagen Training Institute. “Our goal is to enable employees as best we can to produce electric vehicles in large numbers and the highest quality,” says Holger Naduschewski, Managing Director of the Volkswagen Training Institute in Zwickau. The training staff have undertaken a long-term effort to prepare for the mammoth task, expanding training capabilities, in particular in high-voltage technology. Massive investments have also been made in training technology and augmented reality. Naduschewski: “We are working with roughly 90 different training partners depending on the training segment in order to bring in the best experts as instructors.
Production of the Golf Variant in Zwickau. This production will also discontinue shortly..
This includes industrial partners like Siemens and Kuka, as well as renowned institutions of higher education, such as TU Chemnitz, TU Dresden and the West Saxon University of Applied Sciences of Zwickau.” Approximately 1,000 internal and 1,600 external trainer days have been planned for the training measures. The challenge is an enormous one. Naduschewski again: “We are training a huge variety of topics in a relatively short amount of time, and all of it on the highest educational level.”
“To make the training courses interesting, we’ve come up with some creative ideas for our colleagues,” says Patrick Hofbauer, who is heading up the MEB Personnel project. There is something called the escape room in which employees go through various different topic areas, experiencing and learning about electromobility in an interesting and fascinating way. Team-building is another objective.
The training courses will start in January 2019 and run through 2021. They will be accompanied by a motivation and change concept. This will include driving events with the e-Golf, internal discussions, and a new slogan “Tradition Meets the Future”. The Zwickau workforce chose that one itself by voting on the top ten of over 250 suggestions.
The new slogan ideally embodies the combination of a history of over 100 years of automotive expertise in Zwickau on the one hand and the future of automobile production on the other.
“Through the training courses and our change concept, we are attempting not just to get all employees on board, but to get them excited and interested in what’s new,” says Hofbauer. “Ultimately this is a huge opportunity for our location here in Zwickau to be a pioneer in e-mobility.”
A total of 1.2 billion euros will be invested in making Zwickau the e-plant of the future. Starting in late 2019, the Volkswagen ID. will be the first series vehicle worldwide to be produced on the MEB basis. The ID. CROZZ will follow shortly thereafter. By late 2020, only MEB electric vehicles will be produced in Zwickau (six models for three brands), with plans for the production of up to 1,500 vehicles daily.
(1) e-Golf, power consumption in kWh/100 km: 12.7 (combined); CO2 emissions in g/km: 0 (combined); efficiency class: A+),
