Healthcare Logistics and freight company Ryders Customs & Forwarding are providing work placements and on-site experience for students enrolled in a new logistics course offered by the Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT).
Healthcare Logistics warehouse manager Terry Hamilton, says the company’s involvement is not just a good idea, but an important step to introducing students to his line of work.
“It would be good if more businesses adopted a student while still at school. The work experience is as valuable to them as it is to us,” he says.
He says that the company wants young people to see distribution and logistics as an exciting future work prospect which offers plenty of opportunity. This is especially true for the young people in South Auckland where the Healthcare Logistics warehouse is based.
Ryder’s general manager Mark Ryder, says work experience is “an essential step from school to employment. “Students help to load and unload, unpack containers, learn the structure and systems of logistics and often accompany the driver on the road.”
During their 12 week placement, he says students have discovered another world outside school, grown in confidence, got to know the job and its challenges and experienced what it’s like to work in logistics.
MIT’s programme leader, Vaughan Lovelock, says the course, which is part of a manufacturing and technology vocational pathway, was launched last year with a pilot programme for 19 students from four South Auckland schools.
At the start of the course, students learn theory at MIT’s campus in Otara to learn
everything from stock management, transport types, freighting goods to theft and fraud in retail distribution.
The goal for the Year 12 students is 25 NCEA credits in a specialised field and a pathway to a career in one of the most important global professions.
The end result from the pilot course has seen two graduates go on to a Logistics Diploma Course, one student placed in a supermarket position and 10 returned for a second year half logistics/half business course launched in 2015.
