Transforming Your Workforce Through AIM’s Plastics Technology and Engineering Certificate Program

Addressing the Knowledge and Skills Gap in the Plastics Industry:

The senior employees are nearing retirement, leaving companies with a workforce of new hires that need an education option that is designed with the employee and company in mind. To maintain operational success, companies require a structured approach to education and training.

New Resource Available:

We released a new Employer ROI Fact Sheet for the AIM Institute’s Plastics Technology and Engineering (PT&E) Program. It helps bridge the gap between an employee’s desire to learn and a manager’s need to see business value. 

📥 Download the Fact Sheet here.

The Problem:

Without a foundational understanding of plastics, the following issues regularly arise on the production floor:

• Plastic Material Selection Issues: Not understanding the intricacies of numerous material options with specific, often competing, application requirements leads to costly mistakes.
• Mold Design Rework: Selecting the wrong gate location(s), inadequate cooling, incorrect shrinkage calculation, and other design factors lead to expensive and time-consuming rework.
• Injection Molding: Part failures often come from improper drying, incorrect strategies for mold and plastic temperatures, and a general lack of understanding of how the process settings affect material properties.
• Part Design: Many quality issues result from parts being designed by people who are not educated in plastics, leading to cosmetic and dimensional issues, sink marks, warp, and mechanical performance issues.

The Solution:

The Plastics Technology and Engineering (PT&E) Certificate Program provides an education and training solution for the injection molding industry. It is made up of four courses focused on the four pillars of the injection molding industry: Plastic Materials, Mold Design, Injection Molding, and Part Design.

Considerations vs the AIM Solutions:

When evaluating new programs, management frequently reviews cost, time, and employee retention.

• Cost: Tuition is a fraction of the cost of a single damaged mold or a year of scrap. To further maximize your budget, many states offer workforce grants to offset training fees.
• Time: AIM utilizes a hybrid learning model of online and in-person classes. We spread out the four-week long courses over a 10-month period. Students will be at the AIM Institute for only four of those weeks. While back at work, students periodically join the instructors for a 1.5 hour online session to go over the course homework. This learning model is designed to maximize knowledge retention and minimize disruption to your business and the student’s home life because they can continue to work and be with their family as they learn.
• Instructor Support & Homework: We understand that engineering topics and formulas can feel intimidating. But the formulas in the program contain only basic math functions. Any concerns with math will be identified in our free enrollment evaluation. The AIM Director meets personally with each student online to review the evaluation results and discuss any concerns the student may have. Plus, there are built-in classroom exercises that are also reviewed during the online sessions, so the students have plenty of time to practice and ask questions. We also offer a Molding Math class for those who may need a refresher course ahead of them enrolling, ensuring every student has the tools they need to succeed.
• Retention: Investment signals value (read the full article). All managers know that attrition is part of business. But managers can mitigate those risks by providing education opportunities for their employees. A study by FORBES found that employees often leave companies because they feel the company doesn’t care about their growth, and that employees are more likely to stay at a company that invests in their career development. Additionally, having multiple people with similar education would further mitigate the concern of one person leaving. It is in the best interest of the company to have a well-educated workforce because they are the ones making very important and costly decisions for your organization on a daily basis.

Accreditation Standards:

The AIM Institute is home of the industry’s only courses and programs that are accredited to the ANSI/ASTM E2659 standard. For critical industries, training matters more. An ANAB accreditation is to a certificate program what an ISO certification is to a manufacturing operation.

Measurable Results:

PT&E graduates solve existing problems and advise on new projects upfront. For example, Edwin Flores, Principal Process Engineer at Integer Greatbatch, faced challenges with field failures, out-of-spec dimensions, and regulatory and safety risks. He applied what he learned in the program to redesign the mold and adjust the annealing process. Upon the redesign, parts met specs on the first try. What he learned at AIM and implemented at the company accounted for over $400,000 cost savings per year. His facility is now called the Molding Center of Excellence.

➡️ Start your journey today: https://hubs.ly/Q03_mXCy0 

📞 Contact us with questions: (814) 899-6390 or https://hubs.ly/Q03_mXML0