In appreciation of Apprentices!!

Apprenticeships were a tried and trusted route into a solid career for centuries, but somewhere in the past few generations the programme appeared to lose its appeal. Leaving the engineering/manufacturing industry with the biggest skills gap it has ever suffered. At Kyocera SGS we recognised this gap early on and realised that by harnessing the power of apprenticeships we could limit the affects when our experienced engineers move into well-deserved retirement.

Therefore, over the past decade our apprenticeship programme has remained strong, meaning we could keep a step ahead. We have had many of our apprentices continue into full time roles within the business.

We have been very fortunate to have found many talented team members who have learned via our apprenticeship programme and Farnborough Technical College. Their support has been pivotal and their continued development has helped ‘future proof’ our business.

Some shining examples of our apprentice successes include:

Luke, who after completing his apprenticeship began working as a Coating Technician in our Kyocera Hardcoating Technologies division, producing cutting edge PVD coatings for our solid carbide tools. This led to his promotion to Hardcoating Operations Manager and now he is Manufacturing Lead for Kyocera SGS!

Chris, also moved into Hardcoating Technologies on finishing his apprenticeship with us and is now our Lead Coating Technician.

Scott started as an apprentice with Kyocera SGS and harnessing his aptitude for design engineering progressed his career into our talented Technical Team, who design our ‘industry leading’ cutting tools. As a Technical Engineer using CAD software and producing highly specialized drawings, he is pivotal in creating significant time and cost savings for our customers.

Our programme can even be successful before the apprentices have even graduated, some of our current cohort are already moving to roles on shift as Pre-setters/CNC Setters and Operators and also excitingly in our Research & Development team!

Being an experienced Manufacturing Engineer is a great career choice and for our business to have our quality and values built into our apprenticeship programme means we are heading for a very bright future.

Pictured below are: Theo, Sam, Nikolai and Avan