Tailor-made training packages
Breemes lays the foundation for PLC knowledge at DHL Aviation
DHL Aviation in Brussels Airport invests heavily in training and education in order to improve knowledge levels internally and its position on the labour market externally. Breemes contributes to this with a foundation course in PLC for maintenance technicians. The knowledge they gain from this helps them in matters such as programming operations in a more energy-efficient way. As well as this, DHL Aviation is also looking at other courses, such as the Profibus malfunction solution course, that Breemes runs. The sustainable, malfunction-free collaboration is discussed here below.
Peter Lobbinger from DHL Aviation knows just how tricky the labour market for technical personnel is in the area around Brussels. As maintenance duty manager for the parcel shipping company at Brussels Airport, he is responsible for the maintenance of the sorting installations and their respective accessories. “Since we moved to our new premises in 2017, the maintenance organisation has grown from 20 to 60 people. That was a real challenge. In order for us to be appealing to the labour market, we take school leavers on as operators or junior technicians, and we offer them the chance to grow to senior technician or technical expert. Obviously that’s something they need to be trained for, especially since we work with the newest sorting machines, and that’s how we ended up getting in touch with Breemes. I myself once took their Pilz safety engineer training course while working for another company. It was well set-up, and I thought the content was amazing. I’d just become a project manager, in a role that involved design, installation and commissioning, and the background in risk analysis and knowledge of the Machinery Directive that this training course gave me was really useful.”
PLC foundation course
One particular motivation was the opportunity to send two employees to Denmark for a commissioner training course with sorting installations supplier Beumer. The fact that they would already have a foundational knowledge of the PLCs that manage the installations was thus very useful, Lobbinger notes. “Breemes was very flexible, and in just two weeks it was arranged for two of our people to attend the course. They then went to Denmark for four weeks of training, and four years later they are still working with us and have grown even further. That was indeed a success story for us. A few more of our staff have taken the Breemes PLC foundation course since then, partly as a result of the fact that we now send two people to the commissioner training every year: this allows us to make our team as strong as possible, independent of third parties.”
“Not just a general course, but real focus on the equipment that we use here”
Breemes set up a PLC foundation course that was specifically tailored for DHL Aviation, says Joren Marteaux, technical representative for Breemes. “This course is designed for employees who are going to work with SIMATIC S7 PLCs: programmers, installers, service and maintenance staff and other PLC users. It starts at the beginning: what is a PLC, how do you get online and how do you programme it? You also learn how to make use of standard documentation options and to look at, analyse and test existing PLC programmes. The first training course was done at our location in Zonhoven. We can also give courses at the customer’s own site, but they sometimes express a preference for our location, since staff can be easily distracted by colleagues when attending a course at their regular workplace.” The course was customised for DHL Aviation. “We asked them which systems they work with and what their needs were, and then we structured the course around that.” Lobbinger confirms that, adding that “it was not just a general course, they went into real detail on the equipment that we use here.”
Sustainable programming
The collaboration with Breemes only left DHL Aviation wanting more, Lobbinger reports. “They have already been in touch with us to offer yet more training courses for areas including Datalogic and Profibus, among others. We have not yet had many Profibus errors, but nonetheless we want our people to gain more knowledge about resolving errors for Profibus. In the current Covid period things have fallen a bit quiet, but we want to continue further developing our training schedule for the next few years. Many of our junior technicians start off in mechanical maintenance, and once they’ve mastered that they can move towards electrical engineering.” For that purpose DHL Aviation looks to Breemes’ education and training opportunities, among other things. At the same time, the PLC foundation course continues to be a sustainable element of the training programme.
“Achieve sustainability gains with smart PLC programming”
DHL Aviation has set an ambitious sustainability objective for 2050: “Zero emissions”. At Ground Support Equipment they are as such now gradually moving over to electrical vehicles. Material Handling Equipment, Lobbinger’s domain, already switched over to a more energy-efficient system at the time of the relocation in 2017. In addition, most of the installations now have an energy saving mode, which turns on by itself if no packages pass through for a given period of time, Lobbinger explains. “Understanding the PLC programmes as well as the behaviour and usage of the motors will allow us to make proposals to optimise that mode, for which the provider can make adjustments to the installation software. We can still gain from setting up the right parameters in, for example, the frequency inverters on the motors.” In short, the better that DHL Aviation’s maintenance technicians are able to program the PLCs, the better they can contribute towards the sustainability objectives. Breemes does not do DHL Aviation’s energy saving for them, says Joren Marteaux in conclusion. “The scope of their installations and the number of PLCs and other systems make them an interesting customer for us. Of course it is our ambition to supply materials for them in the future. For now, we can continue to grow with them with our tailor-made training courses.
Highly automated and well trained
DHL Aviation at Brussels Airport is the sorting centre for DHL Express in Belgium for package delivery by truck or by aeroplane. 2017 saw the completion of new premises, where currently 1,600 people work using the newest technology: six automatic sorting installations, 6.5 kilometres of conveyor belt, more than twenty x-ray machines and the required weight and dimension units. The maintenance organisation comprises more than sixty employees, distributed over Facilities, Ground Support Equipment and Material Handling Equipment. DHL Aviation serves both the b2c and the b2b market and is growing rapidly. The company invests heavily in training employees, in order to retain school leavers and allow them to grow within the company, among other reasons.