Perspectives on Manufacturing Skill Development – Part 1: Why Certification Matters

This article from Industrial Equipment News covers the advantages of Plant Floor Certifications.

Plant floor certifications have not always been par for the course, therefore the benefits may not be evident to individual workers. Fortney admits that there was a time where even he solicited input to better understand why the “alphabet soup” of certification letters following a name actually mattered. What he eventually learned was that certifications meant that everyone in the conversation was speaking the same language, despite their different roles in a process. “Our OT teams need to have a seat at the table and they need to have a voice. And the training, building that awareness, needs to take place to help them attain that,” he explains. “Our IT folks also benefit from learning about things like industrial automation. How do these machines move? What happens when the line goes down, and what is the impact?” Rockwell defines this process as a “pathway” and, according to Fortney, it starts with building a common language and understanding the fundamental elements that impact industrial networks, and then concludes with the higher level certification prep courses that Rockwell has developed in alliance with Cisco.