Mechanical-engineering apprentices at Olympus Engineering in Stoke-on-Trent have gained unprecedented levels of ‘Engineering Kompetenz’ to boost their learning and careers at the precision engineering company, after Walter GB offered them free training and awareness in tooling and production technologies (www.walter-tools.com).

Will Mitchell, quality and technical manager at Olympus, said: “Walter’s in-depth tooling expertise has given a massive boost to the youngsters’ pro-duction engineering knowledge base, and all eight have received a Certificate of Competence in the jointly designed Fundamental Manufacturing Economics and Cutting Tool Application Programme.”

Walter GB has been supplying Olympus with a wide range of tooling for some time.Indeed, Walter has been its main tooling integrator for the past 12 years, providing on-site tooling vending machines to the business, which employs 157 people (www.olympusengineering.co.uk).

As a result of this close co-operation, Mr Mitchell discussed the potential for additional training for Olympus apprentices in all aspects of tooling with Walter GB’s regional applications engineer, Gary Wilson.

That led to Mr Wilson and the apprentices spending 30min a week over a three-month period last year covering a variety of subjects — manufacturing economics, the fundamentals of metal-cutting and cutting-tool applications, plus a production environment case study.

Mr Mitchell said: “We felt it would be very worthwhile to add in-depth tooling knowledge to our apprentices’ curriculum, which traditionally involves day release at a local college as well as comprehensive in-house training on our shopfloor.

"Together with Walter GB, we came up with a focused programme of modules that have given the apprentices an insight into the basics of tooling plus solving production problems using different machining and tooling strategies.”