Young motivated students will be trained here in the job profile automotive mechatronics aftersales with a focus on “Digitalisation and E-mobility” or “Body Technology”. Scholarships are intended to give interested parties from socially disadvantaged backgrounds access. The company is also planning additional centres in Tokyo and in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, the sports car manufacturer has extended cooperation contracts with ten educational institutions and is continuing its Porsche Elite Apprentice Programme (PEAP), which supplements the otherwise purely theoretical training at vocational schools with detailed practical part.
“The automotive industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation: New technologies are emerging in ever-shorter cycles, and job profiles are changing – not least because advancing digitalisation is increasingly transforming the car into a rolling smartphone. Even with an icon such as the 911; in its latest version it shows the direction things are headed in,” says Daniel Schukraft, Vice President Aftersales at Porsche. Off-the-peg training programmes do not cover sufficiently the needs of modern Aftersales to guarantee premium quality customer service in the face of this rapid transformation. This makes it even more important for Schukraft “to educate our future qualified technicians today through our unique vocational education programs.”
All activities are bundled under the PAVE (Porsche Aftersales Vocational Education) umbrella. The global vocational education initiative is a response to the digital transformation and rising e-mobility – and is particularly valuable in regions where vocational education provision is currently inadequate, as PAVE supplements the various local standards of education. It uses a modular, demand- and competency-oriented concept that allows to tailor curricula individually to the requirements of the respective market, and then to assess them uniformly based on the criteria of the European Qualification Framework. However, not only is Porsche responsible for curricula and their ongoing development, but it also qualifies teaching staff and offers support in equipping the modern learning environments in which courses take place.
PAVE originated in the Porsche Training and Recruitment Centre Asia in Manila, where in collaboration with the Don Bosco Technical Institute and importer PGA Cars Inc., the sports car manufacturer has been enabling underprivileged young people in the Philippines to secure sustainable career prospects through professional training since 2008. Porsche has also been offering training for other Volkswagen Group brands at the site since 2016, increasing the annual number of graduates from 30 to 100. In its South Africa operation, the programme is also aimed at talented young people who would otherwise be unable to access the labour market.
Scholarships ensure that the program is accessible
Porsche will offer vocational education for the Group brands in Mexico as well. For the pilot class in Puebla, which will have 25 students, the company is looking for junior staff who are enthusiastic about cars. Although students must pay the school fees that are standard in the country, Porsche will also ensure with the help of scholarships that the program is accessible to socially disadvantaged young adults in Mexico. However, the first priority is to introduce standardised vocational education in the interaction between school boards, Porsche AG and Porsche’s local representatives. This will equip students with the necessary technical skills for the future.
The Porsche Elite Apprentice Programme (PEAP) – an initiative introduced by Porsche China’s Porsche Talent Academy – is taking the same approach. Since 2010, Porsche has been collaborating with state and private educational institutions that offer intermediate and advanced vocational qualifications. The company is involved in a total of 19 collaborations, through which more than 100 graduates are trained every year. The main driving force behind PEAP was the aim to bring together the industry, dealers and vocational schools in order to future-proof the three-year training programme; this had previously been purely theoretical, and the addition of extensive practical elements represented a major step towards dual training. This approach sees prospective automotive mechatronics and body technicians spending the last nine months of their apprenticeships working in Porsche Centres – their future places of employment – to further develop their brand-specific skills. As well as PEAP, Porsche is involved in a number of other activities within the Volkswagen Group, bringing the total number of collaborations in the area of education to over 40.
