In the middle of preparations for WorldSkills Kazan 2019

18.04.2019

Exchange with participants of WorldSkills 2017 at 2nd Team weekend in Spiez

From 12 to 14 April the second Team Weekend from the SwissSkills Team 2019 took place. The 42 candidates met together with their experts, a mental trainer, physiotherapists and further members of the delegation at the Training Centre for the Swiss Meat Industry in Spiez for another preparatory weekend for the WorldSkills Professional Championships from 22 to 27 August in Kazan, Russia. It started on Friday evening with a flying dinner where family members, representatives of employers, representatives of professional associations, sponsors and press members could take part. The former candidates of the WorldSkills 2017 in Abu Dhabi were also there to share their experiences with the participants of 2019 and to give some advice. Our employee Thomas Schranz, who competes in the category Polymechanics/Automation, was once again able to exchange with his predecessor Marco Michel, who won the silver medal in Abu Dhabi. The former candidates from other categories also described their - positive and negative - experiences. For Thomas this exchange is valuable, because advice from someone who has already experienced the competition situation at WorldSkills Championships is helpful for his training and preparation. It is also good to be warned that the tools might get stuck at the customs or something might be missing at the competition. After procuring the almost 900 kg of tools that he will send to Kazan at the end of July, the 20-year-old polytechnician is now training on identical milling/turning machines as those used in Kazan.

For him, this is a changeover, as he had previously worked on machines with a different control system. The training course on the new machine control was helpful, but the machine still does not always do exactly what he wants, says Thomas Schranz with a grin. The manipulations and the finding of the correct operating buttons were done automatically on the previous machines. On the new model, this has to be practiced until the desired automatism starts, because operating errors or searching for functionalities of the machine cannot be afforded at a world championship. Together with Swissmechanics, Wandfluh AG has decided to rent a milling machine for the period up to the WorldSkills. This gives Thomas the opportunity to prepare himself optimally for the WorldSkills. At his workplace, he is training with test projects on about two days a week. During his training, he can count on the support of Andreas Allenbach. Andreas is Swiss-/WorldSkills expert and apprentices trainer at Wandfluh. He was Thomas' trainer during his apprenticeship as a polytechnician in the previous years and it was also Andreas who motivated Thomas to participate in the SwissSkills in September 2018 in Bern.

 

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