IMPLEMENTATION AND REVIEW OF THE SOTRAIN TRAINING PACKAGE AT MACKAY SUGAR

THE RELATIVELY HIGH turnover over the past few years of shift supervisors and operators in the production departments of Mackay Sugar factories has led to a lack of technical knowledge. Mackay Sugar Limited (MSL) has identified from internal assessments that about 50% of the downtime of its factories can be attributed to the lack of training of its shift supervisors and operators. Consequently, training for operational personnel has become a priority for the company. Mackay Sugar has several avenues for the technical training of its operational personnel. These include MSL’s internal training programs, the recently developed SOTrain training program, the SRM training package created in the mid-90s, the use of external training consultants and specialised SRI training courses. After careful consideration, the management of MSL decided on trialling the SOTrain training program prior to the start of the 2015 crush season. The SOTrain program was developed by QUT and SRI with financial support from SRDC (now SRA) and a syndicate of Australian sugar mills. The SOTrain program was implemented at Mackay Sugar in the 2015 season as a trial. The SOTrain program has been found to be a good generic program, but requires site customisation to ensure it works as intended.