The largest training camp in the automotive industry

Volkswagen is training all their 8,000 employees at the Zwickau plant to be ready for e-car production by 2021. The cost and effort are enormous – but also justified. After all, Zwickau will be the trailblazer for production of the Volkswagen ID. family.

Aerial view of the Zwickau plant: the Volkswagen Group is converting it to the leading factory for e-mobility. All 8,000 employees are being trained.

The most extensive qualification and advanced training campaign in the history of the Volkswagen Group is currently underway at the Zwickau location. Nearly the entire workforce there – 8,000 in total – is being made ready to build six electric models for three brands in the future: Volkswagen, Audi, Seat. That is the plan for the final construction stage starting in 2021. From that point onward, the Zwickau employees will ensure that up to 330,000 purely electric cars annually will roll off the assembly line.

Volkswagen gets down to business starting November 4th: that’s when mass production of the ID.31 will start – the next milestone in making the e-car accessible to millions of people. That makes Zwickau an essential part of the largest-scale electrification campaign in the automobile industry. In addition, Volkswagen is ensuring that their German factories and the jobs there remain viable in the future through the transformation to e-mobility.

The corporation is preparing the employees there for new production methods and jobs to reach that goal. The changes are coming about primarily because of the special characteristics of the e-car, the new vehicle architecture with the Modular Electrification Toolkit (MEB platform) and increasing automatization in the production process. Around 13,000 training days were planned for 2019 alone. That presumably makes Zwickau the automobile industry’s largest training campus.

The advanced training and instruction sessions follow a set arrangement, which determines precisely which employees are to receive which training when. The scheduled training sessions in detail:

– 3,000 employees learn basic e-mobility skills. This two-day training session applies especially to assembly workers. It takes place in-house and uses Virtual Reality (VR) and Virtual Assembly Training (VMT) technology.

– 3,500 employees receive so-called product and process training courses. These encompass a total of 306 training topics, such as new operational concepts, testing sequences and driver assistance systems.

– 160 employees receive the so-called high-voltage (HV) training course. It lasts up to 18 weeks and leads to one of three certificates for different classifications of qualified electricians: vEFK, EFK and EfffT.

– 1,400 employees receive training in high-voltage awareness building.

Where the fully electric ID.3 (1) is being manufactured as of November 4. The employees are learning new work processes. (1) ID.3: The car is not for sale yet.

– 60 employees will receive training to become specialists in electronics/electrical systems. Topics included in this (up to) 24-month training course are digital connectivity, product and process planning, data management, product and process programming, verification/assurance, error analysis, commissioning and product technology.

How Volkswagen is preparing its workforc e for the production of e-cars

A 200-square-meter, high-voltage laboratory with electric training vehicles was set up specifically for the training courses. Digital instruction and VR goggles aid the employees in getting early, close-up training on the actual product and the actual production processes.

Production of a Golf Variant in Zwickau. This assembly will continue operating parallel to e-car production until 2020.

The advanced training campaign is being implemented together with the Volkswagen Training Institute. “Our goal is to make all employees as capable as possible of producing large numbers of e-cars in the highest quality,” says Holger Naduschewski, General Manager of the Volkswagen Training Institute in Zwickau. The trainers have been preparing themselves for this mammoth project over the long haul. The number of trainers has been increased, especially in the area of high-voltage technology. The training institute has also invested heavily in training technology and augmented reality. Naduschewski: “We are collaborating with around 90 training partners, depending on the training subject, in order to acquire the best experts as trainers. They are industry partners like Siemens and Kuka as well as prestigious educational institutions like the TU Chemnitz, the BA Glauchau and the Westsächsische Hochschule in Zwickau.” The challenges are enormous, as Naduschewski emphasizes: “We are giving instruction in a lot of diverse topics in a relatively short period of time, and all of that at the highest levels of training.”

Training of the workforce, with support from industry partners.

“We came up with some ideas to design the training courses for our colleagues in an interesting way,” says Patrick Hofbauer, who is responsible for the MEB Personnel project. For example, there’s a so-called “Escape Room”, where the employees go through various subject areas and experience and learn about electromobility in interesting and inspiring ways. Team building is another aim of the advanced training campaign.

The training sessions began in January 2019 and will continue until 2021. They are buttressed by a motivation and change concept, which includes driving events with the e-Golf, MEB team talks (internal discussion groups) and learning journeys. All 8,000 employees will have participated in the Change Convention by the end of 2019. The new slogan is “Tradition meets future”.

The Zwickau workforce chose it for themselves by conducting an internal vote between the best ten of 250 suggestions. “Tradition meets future” got the most votes. The new slogan is a very apt embodiment of the relationship between more than 100 years of experience in building cars and expertise for the future automobile production here in Zwickau.

The workforce learns new processes for the production of e-cars. Also with the help of robots.

“We are trying not only to bring our whole workforce along with us through the training courses and change concept, but also to inspire them and make them passionate about new things,” says Hofbauer. “After all, it’s a tremendous opportunity for our Zwickau location to become a pioneer in e-mobility.”

The Zwickau plant is being converted to an e-plant at a total cost of 1.2 billion euros. Starting November 4th, the ID.31 will be manufactured as the world’s first serially-produced car based on the MEB. The ID. CROZZ2 will soon follow. At the end of 2020, only MEB electric cars will be made at Zwickau (six models for three brands) – up to 1,500 cars a day are planned.

Energy consumption

1 ID.3: The car is not available for sale yet.

2 ID. CROZZ: Near series concept car