Scenario

Training is an essential part in maintaining and further developing employee skills and competency, especially those of engineers. New engineering hires may need training in the "basics," such as how to determine the quantity of HVAC systems needed to cool a building in summer months, identify the stress experienced at corner joints of beams to prevent a building's collapse or design a "push toy" to withstand a child's weight and avoid the snapping of a wheel's axle.

Even experienced engineers occasionally need to review fundamental concepts and theories before embarking on new projects or supervising the work of others.

Large engineering organisations have offices and projects across the globe. Real-time collaboration is essential, and the Internet is one means of delivering it. Also, senior-level engineers need to transfer their knowledge to the new incoming ones, but global time zones and the physicality of their office locations make it difficult for a smooth transition. Before the novice engineers start making changes to vital data, they will need training. Effective training involves interactivity.

Problem

How to properly transfer knowledge among engineers working at different sites and, in some cases, across different times, as well as train engineers with the essential skills.

Solution

The Mathcad Application Server can be used to deliver elearning documents securely on the Web via a corporate intranet or extranet. For instance, Mathcad Enterprise files can be automatically converted into Web-ready documents. Once ready for deployment, these pages can be saved to the server from which they can be instantly accessed. New and experienced engineers visit the site to view and interact with calculation-intensive documents. Original documents are accessible only to authors.

Benefits

• Interact with similar data used on other product designs
• Access information "any time, any where"
• Senior-level engineers or "instructors" can easily update example worksheets
• Easy and fast way to work with examples via simple text form fields and pull down menus

Conclusion

The Mathcad Application Server is ideal for large organisations that need a centralised method of instructing new engineers coming onto a project or transferring knowledge from senior-level engineers to novice ones. Web-based training allows the new engineers to freely experiment with interactive examples. End users are content because they are not confronting a "trial-by-fire" scenario. Also, companies do not need to download plug-ins or have Mathcad Enterprise running locally to take advantage of its calculation power or make an additional purchase to implement Mathcad Application Server's e-learning practice.

<< Previous | Next >>