On Wednesday 11th October, Pentagon Plastics had the honour of hosting the third BPF (British Plastics Federation) Factory Tour. Welcoming guests from various companies including Tex Plastics, Broanmain, Lysis Technologies, Numatic and Sharpak to name but a few. Also attending as the events guest speaker was Richard Brown of RJG Technologies. RJG provide award winning training for moulders.
The event was opened by Dr Sara Cammarano of the BPF who detailed the benefits to members of the SIMPL (Safety in Manufacturing Plastics) initiative. This is an industry led initiative to improve health and safety across the whole of the plastics industry working closely with the HSE and was launched in October 2010.
Handing over then to Paul Edwards, MD of the Pentagon Plastics Group (incorp Pentagon Plastics Ltd and Phoenix Engineering) Paul delivered an insight in to the rich history of the group and the goals and hurdles that they foresee in the future.
With the ever prevalent skills gap a hot topic in most manufacturing sectors Richard Brown then delivered an interesting and insightful talk of the training and apprenticeships that are available within the industry. In an age where technology is ever advancing it is easy to look at renewing and updating equipment as the key area of investment, however, if you do not have the skilled staff to operate them with the advance level of processing knowledge you will not see a return on that investment. In short as a business we need to put resource in to training and developing our staff nd this should be an ethos that is driven by the management team.
References : https://www.bpf.co.uk/article/bpf-factory-tour-at-pentagon-plastics-group-1228.aspx
