An article by Ing. Enn Kerner MSc, Worldwide Charity Packaging Productivity Contest.
Left to right: Enn Kerner, Sabine Geldermann (drupa) and Peter Minis (Komori International).
We have seen the enormous contribution from both teachers and the competitor teams in the last two months from as far as Asia to Latin-America, where the printing and packaging industry is taking part in furthering education today.
The young talents have all made their best efforts to set themselves on their first path towards a future career. The support from their coaches and teachers has been extraordinary. The competitors in the regions of conflict had to bravely make their best efforts to participate in this contest while facing the relentless reality of war. This is something that can’t be overlooked under today’s conditions surrounding the competition. In this light, our proposition to companies to offer their help and become our supporters and sponsors holds an immeasurable importance.
Given the industry’s growth of understanding its future needs, the Worldwide Charity Packaging Productivity Contest allows the chance to not only show the drupa exhibitors and audience the live finals of the young talents, but to view them fulfilling a bigger role – to keep printing technology applicable in the future among the World Skills professional community.
A team of students from Korea.
As described, our industry is going through major changes and this at the same time needs fundamental changes in the way education is structured today. The education of printing has historically had it’s success through the newsprint and publication boom, but now it has lost much ground in regards to the necessary competence required to meet the industry’s expectations for the future.
Students from Columbia are excited for the finals at drupa.
Among the new World Skills profession competition working group, we still have different understandings and views on how the future printing and packaging industry profession will look like, including what skills are required by the industry. Should the employee only have a specific competence in one technology, or should they need to be able to navigate between changing printing technologies with ease, having more knowledge than today’s professional school graduate, whilst being grounded in basic science and engineering, having the skills to think and solve problems? Here, the contributions of all stakeholders in the printing and packaging industry, including the functional printing industry, need to join forces and stabilise the success of the industry in the future.
Thank you to the supporters and sponsors, who makes the drupa live-finals possible, including Sinapse Print Simulators, drupa 2024, International Circle, DFTA, Intergraf, Engineers Europe, Printing United Alliance, KOMORI, COMEXI, Zeller Gmelin GmbH, Mendel, Hinojosa, Ohno Inkjet Consulting and Brunton Business Publications.
