In addition to developing the best technology for the field, Stara does have the farmer’s back, and it doesn’t matter if they are on another continent. For this reason, the company received two exchange visitors from South Africa so they can extend their knowledge of our machines and technologies during a three-month internship. The objective is that they can provide Stara with quality technical assistance.
During 90 days, J-Jay Ackerman and Tiaan Botha lived in the town of Não Me Toque for a Stara experience. They also had support from the company employees.
According to the coordinator of the Stara Training Center, Vinicio Ezequiel Guarda Lara, during the internship, the boys worked in the Stara Training Center, Assembly Line, and Manufacturing Engineering. “The internship included training courses about our machinery in the Stara Training Center. They assembled the machines in the factory. Therefore, they acquired full knowledge about the entire Stara process,” he says.
The South African J-Jay Ackerman of the town of Bergville, where nearly five thousand people live, is by the Drakensberg mountains. He is a mechanic and technician. He told us that he decided to do the internship to work with his dad, who has been selling Stara machines in the African continent for more than four years.
To him, it is not possible to choose his favorite internship stage. “Everything I experienced here had its particularities. Every tiny section of the factory has its characteristics. There is no how to compare one with another. I learned a lot in the process. I had the answers to plenty of general and specific questions. Today, I see Stara from a mechanic perspective and an employee too. It is the biggest factory I have ever seen,” he says.
Tiian Botha is of the town of Bulfontein, which has around 24 thousand inhabitants. He came to Stara with the same goal as J-Jay, to work with his dad and provide specialized technical assistance to his reseller. He’s a former military, a mechanical technician, and majors in psychology. The best part of the internship was getting to know and working with the factory technology and the automation of the processes. “The factory is impressive. We were given the chance to get to know a little about everything, and we received training courses that lasted a week per machine. Learning every detail and following the manufacturing processes of the machines made a huge difference in the learning process,” he adds.
During the internship, the South Africans got help from the company co-workers to ease their adaptation process. One of them was Erickson Fonseca Ecco, Stara’s training instructor. He told us he had followed all the learning process steps of the exchange visitors, which was a great experience sharing.
For him, the experience was professional growth. “As entrepreneurs, they mentioned the difficulties faced abroad, such as foreign customers. Having this kind of experience provides us with a different point of view to improve or create new products based on what people from other countries need. We grow a lot as professionals. If I had to sum up in a word my experience in working with them, it would be knowledge”, he emphasizes.
For the CTS (Stara Training Center) coordinator, Vinicio Ezequiel Guarda Lara, this is just the beginning of the project. “We provided training courses to other foreign people, but they were one-week training courses or 15 days, but three months was a unique program. It was a real learning to all of us so we can repeat this kind of training focused on assistance and improve even more the foreign customer experience, partner, and technicians here at Stara,” he highlights.
Vinicio points out that one of the main objectives is that in addition to the technical knowledge, the exchange visitor carries the “Stara spirit,” being willing to help, the commitment to the customer, and especially, the constant evolution motto to their country, the reseller each one will work for.
The ones who followed the exchange visitors, even for a short period, you can tell that they were embraced by the Stara culture. For J-Jay Ackerman, “meeting people and the work was quite different from what I imagined it would be. People are very friendly here and like to share knowledge. When I didn’t know something, I wasn’t afraid to ask for help. Even with the language barrier, we had the support from various co-workers at Stara who eased the process,” he said.
During these 90 days of experience at Stara, J-Jay, and Tiian packed knowledge, plenty of histories to tell, and a bunch of friends in their baggage. Stara is proud to share this experience, as much for employees as for foreign partners. After all, none of us is as good at all as we all together are.
