Print version Recommend this page Press release
18/ 2008
Bonn, 29.04.2008
Produktionstechnologe - New high-tech occupation with good prospects for the future
Developing innovative products using flexible approaches, quickly making them commercially viable and fulfilling complex orders speedily and with a customer-oriented perspective: All this is increasingly crucial for maintaining and boosting one's competitiveness in the machinery and plant manufacturing sector, the automobile and automotive supplier industries and many other industrial sectors. The ability to design innovative production processes, use state-of-the-art technologies and guarantee compliance with quality standards requires employees who have undergone broad, long-term initial and continuing vocational training. This is what the new, future-oriented recognized occupation Produktionstechnologe (approximate translation: production technologist) was conceived for. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) developed this occupational profile on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and in collaboration with experts from labour and management. Training for this new occupation will be available starting 1 August 2008.
Competent skilled workers for intelligent production
The scope of a Produktionstechnologe's work is broad. It includes preparing production orders, producing product samples, testing production equipment and operating testing facilities. Produktionstechnologes set up and put machinery into operation, use special programmes to simulate, control and monitor processes, and maintain data for company-wide integrated production planning and operations management. These specialists organize and monitor ongoing production and are responsible for optimizing processes. To accomplish this, they work together with all divisions of their company, with customers and service providers.
The three-year training lays the foundation for vocational competence by teaching not only personal and methodological skills but also extensive knowledge and skills related to processes and technologies - particularly in the use of information and communications technologies - and to quality management. This opens the door to a broad range of fields in which a Produktionstechnologe can work - and correspondingly good prospects for skilled workers with this qualification.
The Produktionstechnologe occupational profile closes a gap in the list of occupations that can be learned in Germany's 'dual' vocational training system (which combines part-time vocational schooling with practical work experience). The training for this occupation is incorporated into company operations and processes from the first day on. It is organized to reflect typical work processes, goes into greater depth in elective, company-specific operational fields and ends with the skilled worker examination held by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce.
Initial and continuing vocational training all of a piece
The foundation for ongoing further and continuing vocational training is laid during initial vocational training. Using this approach, firms can progressively develop their employees' skills to keep up with technology and process innovations. For this reason, new further training options will be offered in the future that build on the new Produktionstechnologe training programme and will lead to the occupations Prozess- und Applikationsexperten/-in (approximate translation: process and applications expert) and Geprüfter Prozessmanager/ Geprüfte Prozessmanagerin (approximate translation: certified process manager).
This concept will foster learning in the work process. In addition to enabling credit to be granted for informally acquired skills, this concept also foresees the implementation of further training concepts on a job-specific basis. This will provide a practical example for how the call issued by the Committee on Innovation in Vocational Education and Training for "keeping new occupational profiles open for the closest possible linkage between initial and continuing vocational training" can be met.
Further information is available on the BIBB website at www.bibb.de/de/30846.htm or www.produktionstechnologe.de
Point of contact for information at BIBB:
Dr Gert Zinke, Tel.: +49 (0) 228 107-1429, E-mail: zinke@bibb.de
