Cleaver Brooks, a provider of integrated boiler and burner systems in Thomasville, Ga., has a dedicated training department offering Web-based programs, authorized representative regional programs, on-site programs at customers’ facilities and programs held at the Cleaver-Brooks Boiler House and Product Development facility in Milwaukee.
Multiple methods of training are provided by Cleaver Brooks to bring their employees, sales reps and customers up to speed on this advanced boiler and stack economizer packaged unit.
Wendell Pipkin, controls and conversions manager, says, “The objective of all these programs is to improve energy efficiency, system reliability, safety and environmental sustainability. CEUs are attached to many of the courses.”
Cleaver Brooks also uses online training and provides several online certification courses.
“They seem to be working very well and drawing a lot of attention. It seems to also be the up and coming way of providing training with today’s generation and technological advances; plus it reduces travel and other training costs. All methods work well, but often the classroom training seems to work the best because of the human interaction with the students that takes place,” he adds.
“The advantage of the online self-paced training is the students can learn when they have free time within their normal work schedules. Interactive online training works very well, given that hands-on experience is lost with most online training courses. Embedded videos of the trainer and product are very effective, as well.”
Endress+Hauser developed classes specialized for Cleaver Brooks, and they have worked very well. “E+H has put together dedicated training classes just for Cleaver Brooks and our authorized representatives,” says Pipkin.
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“For our salespeople, there is a two-day class covering the features and benefits of the instrumentation we use, how it works and what meter to use for a specific process or application. For our technical staff, we follow that up with three days of classroom training and hands-on commissioning and troubleshooting of the flow meters and transmitters we use.”
Since these sessions are specialized by E+H, they have worked very well, says Pipkin. “We have worked with E+H to tweak the sessions to make them fit our purposes better and to get the most out of what we feel meets our best interest, needs and requirements."
