Latin America. Jorge Hernandez, who joined the Daikin training center in Mexico as a coach, was recently named director. With 2022 in force and a return to post-pandemic face-to-face attendance, it aims to train almost twice as many people this year.
As a context, it is relevant to remember that the Daikin training center that operates in Mexico began its work in October 2015, with a methodology based on 20% theory and 80% practical exercises. Whose certifications, by the same dynamics of the industry, are conditioned over time by the improvements and novelties of the HVAC systems, but with notifications of the offer to update to these changes.
In that sense, this offer has become an educational option that responds to the needs of the market, as it trains all types of customers and helps reduce the problems of guarantees of the devices.
It is not free that Daikin considers this space as a vertex of human talent development in Mexico and Latin America, where emphasis is placed on heating, ventilation and air conditioning, since during the pandemic it managed to take its highly practical model to virtuality, thus diversifying its offer at a time of global crisis.
Thus, the appointment of Jorge Hernández, which coincided with the return to face-to-face attendance in most of Latin America, marks the continuity of this offer of training and technical training, which as of February 15 of this year had managed to train more than 8,700 people.
We were in an interview with him and he answered questions about the challenges and goals in this new position, as well as the differential value of this center.
What is the challenge of taking on the position of director of the Daikin centre?
The challenge I'm taking this year in taking over the training center is basically to increase Daikin's sales in Mexico and Latin America, based on the fact that training is key for all our customers, developers, specifiers and even installers, because if they are steeped in the technical issues and master the different technologies that Daikin has available in this market with greater certainty they can support and justify the use of products of our brand in different projects. In parallel, by training the workforce that is responsible for installing the systems, on that side we will reduce guarantee problems, reducing bad practices. Our catalog has several specialties, so the challenge for this year is interesting.
What are the goals this year of the Daikin training center?
This year we want to reach a greater number of trained people. On average, ignoring the impacts of the pandemic, we are between 4,000 and 6,000 people who do our training courses annually, so the goal is to have 50% to 100% more, to really get closer and positively impact the entire HVAC sector.
What is the differential value of this training center?
Since our birth in 2015 we implemented a different methodology, while the rest of the centers focused on commercial strengths with talks where the client was shown the characteristics and the product catalog. What Daikin did was tackle a basic theory and devote 80% of the course to practice. We have been able to verify this with the exams and the performance in the field of those who have passed through our center, because they perfectly master technology in the different projects they execute.
Finally, Jorge told us that he started in Daikin as a coach when this training center was inaugurated, so he had the opportunity to move in different areas of this educational project, in which he is currently in charge, a matter that facilitates him to have an overview, at the same time detailed, of the needs and internal processes. He was even in charge of developing many of the courses in Mexico in 2015.
