Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

All companies want to reduce the amount of scrap, troubleshooting time, equipment damage, machine downtime, and customer returns. Improving the skill level and confidence of their employees is required to accomplish this. Since it’s not logical to send all of your employees away for training, the only viable solution for achieving workforce competence is to establish a structured in-house training plan using our RightStart™ program.

Manufacturers who use Routsis Training typically reduce scrap and rework by over 61% and eliminate customer returns – all as a direct result of improving the skills and confidence of their workforce.

Customers experience savings in the following categories: lower scrap rates, reduced mold damage, decreased machine downtime, improved troubleshooting time, faster machine startup, fewer defects, more consistent part quality, highly repeatable processes, shorter cycle times, fewer accidents, process optimization, increased customer satisfaction, quicker changeovers, extended tool and machine life, and more energy-efficient processes. We suggest monitoring these metrics as they directly affect margins.

We have found that most employees want to perform well at their jobs but lack the skills and confidence to do so on a consistent basis. When supported by management, a structured training initiative shows that the company is committed to its employees and will undoubtedly increase the overall morale and loyalty of the entire workforce. Having a structured employee development system also helps employees advance within the company. This allows you to better develop your own technical talent from within – which gives your employees more incentive to stay because they do not have to leave to advance themselves professionally, thus reducing employee turnover.

We have the industry’s largest library of interactive courses in the world – with over 200 plastics training titles and new courses and series are being produced and/or updated every year. These courses are developed by industry experts emphasizing our industry’s best-practices. We have relevant training materials that cater to the many departments in virtually any plastics company.

Our training courses always stress safety and industry best-practices whenever possible at the start of the course and whenever we are introducing a topic where safety is a concern. We also offer a full library of 3rd-party health and safety courses. Please contact us for more information regarding which titles are available as new products are constantly being released.

Interactive training is an online, or computer-based, learning method in which the participant interacts with the course using a standard keyboard, mouse, or touchscreen. The information is presented using video, animation, titling, and professional narration. During a course, the participant is presented with questions that must be answered correctly before they can proceed. If answered incorrectly, the information pertaining to that question is repeated until the information is retained. At the end of each course, users must pass a post-test to earn completion status.

With our online courses, your employees can access via computer, iPad, tablet, or Smartphone. Training information is captured in a secured portal in the cloud. Routsis RightStart™ customers have administrative rights to setup and monitor employee activity.

Most of the online courses have a Study Guide, in .pdf format, which paraphrases the content covered in the course – for future reference or note taking purposes.

Our courses cannot be customized, but with our RightStart™ program you can upload your own supplemental materials and presentations as courses. Our mentoring materials and hands-on task sheets can be fully customized to fit your company’s production environment.

Most hands-on training is sporadic, inconsistent, and tends to teach the minimum information needed, at best. Interactive training is much more consistent, informative, and effective in conveying concepts – at the learner’s pace. Online training is best when combined with skills-development labs and focused hands-on mentoring to relate the training to what is taking place on the production floor, so the participants fully understand how what they’ve learned applies to your company.

Customers who purchased from our online store can retake a course if they underperform on the posttest, want to get a firmer grasp on some of the concepts covered, or need a refresher at a later date. Our courses and packages are sold ‘per user’ and we do monitor usage for abuse of these terms. If we suspect that a user account is being used for multiple employees, we’ll contact the customer – but we rarely need to address such a scenario.

Training courses and packages are for unlimited use by a single user, for one calendar year.

Training portal solutions such as RightStart™, Certification Portals, and SmartTech™, are provided using a subscription model such as 1, 2, or 3 years starting from the implementation date. This starting date is implementation meeting for RightStart™ and Certification Portal solutions and the classroom training date for a SmartTech™ event. These portal solutions allow the company to disable existing users and add new users to train during their subscription period.

Training courses and packages are for unlimited use by a single user, for one calendar year – these cannot be changed except for specific circumstances. Call or email us with any questions on this.

Training portal solutions such as RightStart™, Certification Portals, and SmartTech™, are provided using a subscription model such as 1, 2, or 3 years starting from the implementation date. These portal solutions allow the company to disable existing users and add new users to train during their subscription period.

Our RightStart™ solution consists of 7 components:

1. Online Training Courses
   Our online courses are approximately 1 hour each and have a post-test which the participant must score 80% or higher to achieve completion status.
2. Course Study Guides
   Study guides are available to review or print, directly from our online training courses. These guides paraphrase the online content and are a great resource for people who want a reference guide for the course and can also be used for note taking.
3. Hands-On Mentoring
   These on-the-job training materials are customized for your facility and distributed/monitored by the facilitator which relate the knowledge learned in the online courses to the actual production environment. Focused hands-on mentoring is an excellent way to ensure the employees are learning the information and how it applies to their job.
4. Online SkillSet™ Labs
   SkillSet™ labs are shorter online courses that contain Background, Equipment, Purpose, and Procedures lessons for conducting a Specific Skills-Development Lab.
5. SkillSet™ Worksheets
   Worksheets are printed from the Online SkillSet™ Labs and are expected to be completed on the production floor and submitted to supervisor(s) upon completion.
6. Professional Certification Exams
   These benchmarking exams are available for many job functions from setup and technician to quality and engineer. These certify the individual has an understanding of Best Practices and in some cases require a demonstration of good processing and documentation skills.
7. Custom Training Plan
   We’ll develop a custom training path for each job title on the production floor based on the goals and objectives of each position.

We will visit your plant or meet remotely to learn about your company, employees, machine capabilities, and customers – as well as your production frustrations and the specific areas where you’re seeking immediate improvement. During this time, we will complete the configuration of your centralized learning management system (LMS) so your RightStart™ training program is ready to go using any internet browser.

Based on gathered information, we will create a training plan that caters to each job position at your workplace – as well as customized job-specific tasks to help employees develop the necessary skills to improve.

We then make sure you’re training initiative gets underway by showing you how to access and manage the learning management system (LMS). This includes the best way to schedule the training and generating progress reports.

Routsis Training provides ongoing support to all our customers. This includes automatic course updates and integration of new releases to your LMS as soon as they are available.

Note: Smaller companies may utilize the Remote RightStart™ process which includes all the above, but the process is completed remotely, through the use of conference calls and webinars.

Our interaction with you doesn’t end once we leave your site and your training program is underway. Our on-staff plastics experts are always accessible and available to provide technical support and to help your training initiative stay on track. An experience plastics technician with a background in all aspects of processing, materials, troubleshooting, and best practices will note any areas of concern – such as an incorrect calculation, a misunderstanding, or a misinterpretation of data – so you can keep your employees, and your production, on the rise.

No, it is not necessary to hire additional employees to train your workforce. We make it easy for you by teaching two of your employees how to implement, track, and further customize your in-house training program. The interactive training and certification exams are self-sufficient and require no supervision, just a facilitator to periodically review and monitor participant progress. The SkillSet™ Labs will require the company to provide access to equipment to complete the labs, but this can be supervised by existing staff when needed. You will need a technician to verify that trainees are performing.

Routsis RightStart™ customers receive on-the-job training materials that are customized for all positions at your facility. These mentoring materials can be fully customized and ensure that your employees take the knowledge learned from the online training and directly apply it to the production environment. The implementation works best when the top techs and engineers become familiar with the sheets and then go over them with the next wave of trainees.

Our professional certification exams are benchmarking exams developed by respected industry professionals to ensure the participant reaches a specific level of knowledge to pass. These are used by hundreds of companies worldwide and are recognized by industry organizations including SPE (Society of Plastics Engineers) and MAPP (Manufacturers Association of Plastics Processors) These have no expiration date though many of our portal solution customers use retesting as part of their verification process when assessing the need for retraining employees.

These benchmarking exams are available for many job functions — from setup technician to quality engineer. These certify the individual has an understanding of Best Practices and in some cases require a demonstration of good processing and documentation skills.

If the person being tested passes, they receive email confirmation of completion as well as can print up a personalized certificate with a QR code which allows the participant to look up their records and print more certificates when needed.

There are technically 5 components to the Certification Portal training Solution:

1. Online Training Courses
   Online courses are approximately 1 hour each and have a post-test which the participant must score 80% or higher to achieve completion status.
2. Course Study Guides
   Study guides are available to review or print, directly from our online training courses. These guides paraphrase the online content and are a great resource for people who want a reference guide for the course and can also be used for note taking.
3. Online SkillSet™ Labs
   Our SkillSet™ labs are shorter online courses that contain Background, Equipment, Purpose, and Procedures lessons for conducting a specific Skills-Development Lab.
4. SkillSet™ Worksheets
   Worksheets are printed from the Online SkillSet™ Labs and are expected to be completed on the production floor and submitted to supervisor(s) upon completion.
5. Professional Certification Exams
   These benchmarking exams are available for many job functions from setup and technician to quality and engineer. These certify the individual has an understanding of Best Practices and in some cases require a demonstration of good processing and documentation skills.

The RightStart™ Solution is a consultative process where we develop a custom employee development system tailored to the objectives of each job title combining online training, SkillSet™ Labs, customized hands-on mentoring materials, and Professional Certification Exams. This solution is designed for mid-to-large size companies looking for an integrated training solution designed to their specific needs.

The Certification Portal is a turn-key version of the RightStart™ solution which uses the most common training paths combining online training, SkillSet™ Labs, and Professional Certification. This solution is designed for small-to-midsize companies looking for an efficient and cost-effective in-house training solution.

SmartTech™ participants receive: pre-requisite online training courses, face-to-face instruction and hands-on skill development sessions, a 3-ring binder, calculator clipboard, classroom study guides, skills-development worksheets, post-requisite online training courses, and a certificate of completion.

Each online course or training package purchase comes with unlimited use by a single user, for one calendar year. Once purchased, you will receive an e-mail within 24 hours that contains your training link and personal login information. The training can be accessed by any computer, table, iPad, or smartphone with a stable internet connection using any web browser or our LMS Bridge training app. Our courses include printable study guides for reference or worksheets for completing SkillSet™ labs on the production floor. Users can print certificates of completion after passing a course’s posttest.

Store customers that purchase courses or packages can login and see their individual progress at any time. If a company purchases training for multiple users, routine reports can be requested.

RightStart™, SmartTech™, and Certification Portal customers can monitor their employees’ progress directly through the Learning Management System (LMS). Routsis Training also sends monthly reports to these customers to keep them up-to-date.

SmartTech™ customers will receive routine status reports for both pre- and post-requisite online training courses.

At Routsis Training, our primary focus is on developing advanced processing skills in plastics processing companies. We do this through both knowledge learning and skills development. The knowledge portion can be done anywhere, but the skills must be practiced and developed using actual production equipment.

• Knowledge Learning
  The first step is to educate the employee with powerful online training combined with focused hands-on mentoring materials. The online training combines video, animation, narration, strategic titling, and testing to keep the person engaged so they retain the information being presented. Focused, customized hands-on mentoring materials are used on the production floor to relate what was learned to what happens on the production floor.
• Skills Development
  The second step involves our SkillSet™ labs, which combine online instruction with a worksheet that is to be completed at the workplace. These can range from basic skills, such as documenting a process and setting max injection pressure, to complex tasks, such as generating rheology curves and conducting a comparative purging analysis. Applicable skills cannot be developed at home, they must be obtained using the actual equipment and tools used on the production floor in your facility. Learning the proper way to conduct a task, and performing with confidence, is a critical step in skill development.

The Scientific SkillSet™ Series is a unique learning experience that combines detailed, step-by-step online instruction with practical hands-on labs and worksheets. Topics of these labs include Scientific Molding, The 5S System, Basic Measuring Tools, and Purging Analysis. Each SkillSet™ Lab is a blend of the following components:

• BACKGROUND - Your technicians understand the goal of each SkillSet™
• PURPOSE - Technicians learn specifically how each Scientific SkillSet™ applies to their job
• EQUIPMENT - Items are detailed to ensure techs have the tools they need to succeed
• PROCEDURE - Each step is demonstrated so your techs can proceed with confidence
• WORKSHEET - Contains all the information your techs need to complete each SkillSet™ on the production floor

If you have any questions or wish us to review any specific SkillSet™ Lab, just send it to support@traininteractive.com.

Our Advanced Certification Exam for Scientific Processors does require a specific set of worksheets to be completed and sent to us for review to achieve advanced certification. This process is explained in detail after the initial exam is completed.

There are technically 4 components to the Multi-Language Skills Portal training Solution:

1. Online Training Courses
   Our online courses are approximately 1 hour each and have a post-test which the participant must score 80% or higher to achieve completion status.
2. Course Study Guides
   Study guides are available to review or print, directly from our online training courses. These guides paraphrase the online content and are a great resource for people who want a reference guide for the course and can also be used for note taking.
3. Online SkillSet™ Labs
   SkillSet™ Labs are shorter online courses that contain Background, Equipment, Purpose, and Procedures lessons for conducting a Specific Skills-Development Lab.
4. SkillSet™ Worksheets
   Worksheets are printed from the Online SkillSet™ Labs and are expected to be completed on the production floor and submitted to supervisor(s) upon completion.

Yes, there are many companies, schools, colleges, and institutions using our content in exactly that capacity. There are a few different models for educational institutions:

• Classroom Approach
  Our SmartTech™ training materials can be integrated into the classroom, lab, and eLearning curriculum
• Online Approach
  Our online courses can be used in the classroom or online in parallel with the classroom materials
• Lab Approach
  Our SkillSet™ worksheets can be used in the lab environment
• Processing Guides
  Hundreds of educational institutions use our pocket-sized processing guides for their students often at no cost
• Contact Us
  We can develop a low-cost solution to help your educational goals

Based on job function, we recommend between 1-2 hours of training a week for lesser skilled operators and technicians. We recommend 2-3 hours a week for more advanced technicians, managers, and engineers. Excessive training such as 5+ hours a week is not recommended because the mind needs time to incorporate what is learned into its long-term memory. People who cram or acquire information too fast tend to remember only those pieces of information which reinforce what they already know and un-familiar information gets lost over the long-term.

This is the reason why our SmartTech™, or face-to-face training, sessions require both pre-requisite training to familiarize the participant with the information they are going to learn ahead of the class as well as post-requisite training to reinforce and expand on the information learned after the session is complete. Our courses are designed to have participants follow a specific routine in your production environment. This ensures that your processes are developed the same way.

All Routsis Online Training courses are cross-platform and have been tested on a variety of different device, operating system, and browser combinations. In general, our courses function well on any modern computer, laptop, tablet, or mobile device with a fast, reliable internet connection. We also have Android and iOS apps to optimize the online training with smaller devices.

Yes, you can upload your PowerPoint™ presentations onto the Routsis online platform using 3rd party applications such as Articulate. Once you create the SCORM course, we can walk you through the simple process and show you how to add the course to your company’s existing training portal. This option is available to our RightStart™ workforce training solution customers.

Yes, we offer subscription models for corporations and companies who utilize their own LMS and will assist in the uploading and configuration of these modules. Our courses are fully SCORM 1.2 compliant – which is the most common standard utilized by online Learning Management Systems.

Scientific Molding is a data-driven approach to developing, documenting, maintaining, and troubleshooting an injection molding process. Once a scientific molding process is established, the process outputs are meticulously documented and optimized, which greatly simplifies startup, troubleshooting, and allows injection molding processes to be easily transferred to different molding machines.

Please see our Scientific Injection Molding page for more details.

Routsis Training has been the plastics industry’s premier trainer for over 40 years. The focus has always been on developing content and solutions that most help plastics processing companies develop technical workplace employees in-house.

Routsis Training has provided workforce training to thousands of companies around the world for over 40 years. With tens of thousands of people trained ranging from operators and technicians to engineers and professors.

Routsis has worked with dozens of experts in topics ranging from scientific molding and extrusion to the 5S system and basic measuring tools. Our library of expertise is always expanding with the primary focus of providing employee-development solutions that target processing facilities across the plastics industry.

Learn more about our Partnerships & Education Institutions.

Routsis has pioneered training in the plastics industry including the following milestones:

• 1980s: 3D animation for teaching.
• 1990s: The use of CD-ROM interactive training for teaching plastics professionals
• 2000s: RightStart™ custom solution uses online training, mentoring, skills development, and certification
• 2010s: SmartTech™ solution combining pre and post training, classroom instruction and skills development
• 2020s: Certification Portals create lower-cost comprehensive solutions for small to mid-size processors
• 1984-2021: Routsis was founded by Andrew Routsis, a degreed Plastics Engineer and adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Andy used his years of processing, tooling, and maintenance expertise combined with his love of teaching to create A. Routsis Associates Inc. fill the need for practical technical training in the plastics industry. Through his years he has created hundreds of training courses and guided the company from VHS to CD-ROM to On-Site to Online Training.
• 1999-present: Daniel Stephens, a degreed Plastics Engineer, is the Senior Plastics Engineer at Routsis Training and is responsible for authoring multiple processing guides, hundreds of training courses and labs, 6 on-site training programs, a dozen certification programs, as well as authored dozens of articles for industry publications. He is also the developer of the RightStart™ Workforce Training solution, SmartTech™ On-Site Instruction solution, and the Certification Portal solution.

There are many different guides available from Routsis Training. Complimentary digital versions are available as well as printed versions for a fee. More information can be accessed here.

Many companies and educational institutions use our Certification Exams to determine knowledge levels before training and in some cases use these to screen out course which may not be needed by an individual. Our training experts can discuss your goals and objectives and help you determine the best solution for the needs of your workforce.