The Glenmorangie Company has launched the industry’s first state-of-the-art whisky bottling CD ROM, revolutionising its production process and training of its West Lothian workforce.
The company, which was voted learndirect scotland’s Learning Employer of the Year 2004, has developed an e-learning training package which enables employees to learn how to change parts on a whisky labeller machine without halting the production process.
In an industry where many different labels are required for different whisky bottles, the whisky labeller machine is a complex piece of machinery and involves a time consuming process as parts need to be changed manually. Glenmorangie identified a need to up-skill employees for this and reduce downtime in this crucial element of the production process.
The online training solution, which cost £25,000 to produce, was funded by learndirect scotland and enables employees to be pre-trained using a computer screen simulation showing how to change parts on the labeller before they are required to undertake the task manually.
The major benefit is that staff can access the course at any time of the day or night, seven days a week, regardless of shift patterns which in turn benefits the company by eliminating gaps in the training process.
Morag Mathieson, training and development manager at Glenmorangie, said: “This is a technically difficult job to carry out without the appropriate training and can be daunting as well as dangerous. One mistake could cost the company up to £50,000 to replace a part for the machine if the proper procedures are not followed, not to mention the cost of down time incurred.
“The new training will also slash the costly down time of machinery by 66 percent, reducing the change over of labels from 90 minutes to just 30mintues. This will give us a significant advantage over our competitors and we hope the implementation of this new training will make a significant difference to our bottom line.”
This pioneering course shows that Glenmorangie is at the forefront of employing e-learning within its industry, addressing a number of critical business issues, introducing modern techniques and processes to improve and increase efficiency levels to ultimately benefit both production staff as well as production levels.
The Whisky Labelling Course is an animated, three part package which covers whisky production, assembly and disassembly.
The new software is the first of its kind within the whisky industry and will provide virtual training for procedures such as changing labelling parts on the bottling line.