Composites UK, the trade association for the UK composites industry, is working to standardise the training guidelines associated with composite manufacturing processes to enable companies to take control of employee skills sets, internally assessing abilities and identifying areas which need to be invested in.

The Composites Assured Practitioner (CAP) Scheme is currently in its pilot phase putting guidelines in place for pre-preg, wet lay-up and resin infusion. Composites UK members Aircelle, Aim Composites and Combined Composites Technologies are on-board, pioneering this initial stage of testing.

Composites UK is now looking for additional companies that want to be ahead of the game, investing in the CAP Scheme in any of these three initial processes and the future of their workforce.

Benefits

Involvement in the CAP Scheme will allow companies to demonstrate compliance of their workforce within audited schemes such as NADCAP, ISO standards and SC21, helping with the manufacturing excellence needed in a supply chain. The Scheme is also overseen by the British Composites Society to provide the link to the professional institutes. Long-term, it will link with apprenticeship schemes and graduate programmes to give a unified approach across the full skill set.

According to the association, the benefits for participating companies are:

• Understanding the competency levels within a company highlighting any skills gaps and therefore training needs
• Enables each company to link project skill requirements with workforce skill levels
• Impacts on right-first-time targets and thus reduces scrap rates

“Using the CAP scheme has helped Aircelle identify areas we may need to improve,” said  Stephen Dyer from Aircelle. “Improving these areas will help to maintain our reputation for manufacturing excellence.”

Standardising the skill levels

“AIM Composites fully support this initiative because it provides the ability to standardise the skill levels of the nationally available workforce via the proposed Composites UK registration data base thus giving the ability to check the competency of prospective employees,” commented David Howell, Quality Assurance Manager at AIM Composites.

“Operating alongside our internal training programme we know this will help us increase skill levels and consequently improve the quality and delivery of components to our customers. Working towards this goal with Aircelle has proven to be a very rewarding experience for all at AIM.”

www.compositesuk.co.uk