The RAPID Manufacturing Institute — an AIChE community dedicated to transforming the process industries by advancing U.S. manufacturing through innovation, efficiency, and supply chain resiliency — has released five new eLearning courses that provide training on entry-level skills that are key to a process operator’s career and day-to-day work. These courses were produced by the Virtual Technician & Operator Training Program (VTOTP), which aims to standardize technician and operator training, identify learning and development gaps, and align training with industry needs. VTOTP’s content has been made possible thanks to it receiving a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Rapid Assistance for Coronavirus Economic Response (RACER) award under the Dept. of Commerce.
Four of these courses — “Basic Process Technology for Operators,” “Process Technology Troubleshooting for Operators,” “Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs) and Other Diagrams and Drawings,” and “Facility Safety for Process Technology Operators” — introduce early-career process operators to relevant technologies and concepts that they will encounter throughout their career. The fifth course — “A Day in the Life of an Operator” — provides an introduction to process operations for those interested in entering the field. These virtual learning courses aim to give technicians a solid foundation of process design, operation, and maintenance that will help them keep their workspaces safe.