Extending supply chain partnerships to training

Finning and Lafarge Tarmac promote best working practice through training and learning workshops

EXTENDING a partnership approach to training in the supply chain is benefitting apprentices from Finning who have taken part in a workshop at Lafarge Tarmac’s Tunstead Quarry in Derbyshire. The visit was for apprentices from the company’s Leeds and Chesterfield branches.

The aim of the partnership between the two companies is to promote best working practice within each company’s infrastructure through training and learning workshops, including Finning’s award-winning apprentice programme.

As part of the agreement, visitors from Tunstead Quarry will take part in a visit to the Finning fluid-analysis laboratory in Leeds, and gain an insight in to the technological advances of Finsight and how intervention and rebuild can prolong the life of quarrying machinery.

Chris Hepworth, operations manager at Finning, said: ‘Partnering with an industry leader like Lafarge Tarmac is a mutually advantageous opportunity. Together, we are sharing our knowledge of equipment solutions and quarrying and providing exciting opportunities to enhance efficiency and, in turn, allowing our apprentices a unique opportunity to see how their work can help a large operation like Tunstead Quarry.

‘For our apprentices, this experience will help them really understand the demands of a quarrying operator and it also allows us to invest time in researching newer ways of providing solutions that will improve productivity and reduce operating costs. We look forward to welcoming the team from Tunstead Quarry to the Leeds branch.’

Discussing the partnership with Finning, Peter Butterworth, stone operations manager at Lafarge Tarmac, said: ‘Sharing best practice can only benefit both parties in the long term. Technology plays an important role in how quarries operate. Through effective contamination-control monitoring and effective fleet-management technology, we’re able to monitor performance and clarify payloads that help us to lower our operating costs.

‘Being able to show the apprentices how our quarry operates can only benefit them in the long term, and it’s great that we’re able to have a positive contribution in their development.’

The Finning apprentices took part in seminars about the operations of the quarry and had a tour of the workshop, in which they saw a Cat 992K wheel loader that had been recently repowered at the Chesterfield branch.

Courtney Leonard, apprentice at Finning’s Chesterfield branch, said: ‘The trip allowed us a great insight into how the work we do in the workshop affects such a large-scale operation like Tunstead. It’s the realization that when a machine is working in the quarry, it’s not just a machine, it’s income.’