Darby Tech, our primary manufacturer designs and builds high-quality training equipment and has as a motto which says, “The Plant is no Place to Practice.” Some might interpret Darby’s motto to mean industrial technicians should complete training on equipment and not practice their skills in the plant for safety reasons.
The plant is no place to practice speaks to our contention and it means exactly what it says. Every operating facility is designed with some specific process for producing a specified product parameter. Our objective is for the technical industrial workforce to be qualified and prepared for employment in any and all of them. The answer is to design, build, and employ generic replications of plant conditions for training. The most significant difference is mock facilities are designed to impart a level of the process, equipment, controls, communications, and safety features for student exposure to the realistic plant environments they can expect to encounter in the outside world in one-hour lab segments. Plants are not.
Bill Draper
South Tucson
Disclaimer: As submitted to the Arizona Daily Star.
