Bradley wins Apprentice of the Month

Bradley has been working at Herga since October 2017. In December 2018 he won the AMI Manufacturing Apprentice of the Month award.

We began looking for apprentices in March 2017, we want to open our doors to the engineers of the future to develop our valued team to meet with our long term goals of growth and investment in our skills and workforce.

To find Bradley we went through an intensive selection process as twenty five local aspiring engineers applied for the one position. Our unique selection process consisted of:

·         Casual Interview format

·         Reading and analysing between the lines of a CV to judge the character and future potential of a candidate as opposed to purely a reflection of the past.

·         Role Play : Running the company

·         Group Task “Who owns the Zebra?” and “Who drinks the water?”

           o   Review and discussions

·         Site Tour and meeting other staff

These tasks not only made our candidates feel more comfortable within the interview process but also tested their ability to work in a team, problem solve, take leadership and challenge themselves.

Bradley was selected from this process and his journey with Herga began later that month.

Bradley’s time at Herga so far…

In the past 15 months Bradley has been working hard making a valued contribution in engineering product development, sampling and administration for Herga. He completed and achieved a nationally recognised training award from Solid applications for his CSWP (Certificate Solidworks Professional) after just one week of full time employment.

Bradley has also implemented some key projects throughout Herga including:

·         Overmoulding Equipment and Tooling Design for strategic removal of epoxy resins from manufacturing process – this saves over 500 hours of manufacturing process time and is a direct result of REACH restricted substances legislation.

·         Implementation of the Herga UV glue robot assembly process. Saving over 1000 hours per year of manufacturing time compared with the old process.

·         Drop Test Equipment for our low cost heavy duty footswitch 6256 – More information here

·         Creating new product equipment in the machine shop

·         Customer Open Can Est System for Hospital beds

·         Pneumatic foot bellow with haptic feedback from 3D printed sample

Bradley Says “I am very surprised and appreciative to have won the apprentice of the month. Working at Herga has been a complete life changer, due to the size of the company it feels like working with a family we take great pride in supporting one another at Herga, I look forward to progressing my engineering career. “

Paul Edwards our Engineering Manager says “This is the first apprentice Herga has had in some years and it has been really exciting for us to support the development of new talent within the business. It was a process very well supported by all departments, senior management and stakeholders. The benefits of bringing new talent into any business gives everyone a new outlook of products, process, systems and their own people management skills.. Here at Herga though, Bradley has only just begun, with the staff taking time to listen to his ideas and suggestions as well as support and guide Bradley in his learning development. It’s clear from the response of WS Training that Bradley has worked really hard to achieve this award. We are so impressed with Bradley we have already offered him a Full Time role as a Production Support Technician in January 2019, supporting him with further development and training throughout the year.”

We are looking forward to continuing to work with Bradley as he is an asset to our team here at Herga.

Apprentice Awards

 The AMI have been awarding an apprentice per month since January 2018 as Manufacturing Apprentice of the Month and soon one of the winners will be awarded the manufacturing Apprentice of the year. It is great that our Bradley could become apprentice of the year but what makes it even better is that Jacob from Variohm won the same award in August meaning that there are 2 nominees from Variohm holdings. It is amazing to see that our apprentice programmes are being recognised and our employees are being rewarded.