From workshop knowledge to a global learning environment

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A yel­lowed beer coast­er bears wit­ness to the first cus­tomer train­ing ses­sion – back in 1976 in Regens­burg. On that July day, so the sto­ry goes, an Rein­hausen employ­ee shared impor­tant tech­ni­cal knowl­edge and skills. A cus­tomer then wrote a few lines of thanks. This memen­to can still be found today in a small dis­play case with a glass lid at the Regens­burg train­ing cen­ter.

The name of this employ­ee: Man­fred Böhm. He was a ser­vice tech­ni­cian at the time and, on his own ini­tia­tive some 50 years ago, orga­nized a few OILTAP^® C, D, and F type high-speed resis­tor-type tap-chang­ers from pro­duc­tion so that he and his col­leagues could stay up to date on main­te­nance issues and learn to make the right deci­sions in the field. They used the breaks between cus­tomer vis­its for this pur­pose. Back then, they had only a cor­ner in the assem­bly area at their dis­pos­al to tin­ker with the tap chang­ers. Soon, cus­tomers also became inter­est­ed in learn­ing the tech­ni­cal details and how the tap chang­ers worked.

And so the idea arose to set up a pro­fes­sion­al train­ing cen­ter. On the one hand, to pro­vide ongo­ing train­ing for MR’s own ser­vice tech­ni­cians to ensure a con­sis­tent­ly high stan­dard of main­te­nance and ser­vice world­wide. On the oth­er hand, to give cus­tomers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to train their own ser­vice per­son­nel so they can bet­ter under­stand the com­plex prod­ucts and solu­tions and use them safe­ly.

Exhibits spanning approximately 1,000 m²

Today, at the pro­duc­tion site in the Haslbach dis­trict of Regens­burg, more than 300 exhibits are gath­ered across near­ly 1,000 square meters to serve as train­ing objects for hands-on train­ing. In addi­tion to all types of tap chang­ers — most of which date from the last cen­tu­ry – there are also motor dri­ves, elec­tron­ic prod­ucts, and trans­form­ers.

A film stu­dio for video learn­ing con­tent and a web stu­dio for dig­i­tal train­ings are now part of the facil­i­ty as well. Up to six groups of trainees can learn on site simul­ta­ne­ous­ly at large work­bench­es and in var­i­ous class­rooms, and a wide range of cours­es for MR tech­ni­cians, ser­vice part­ners, and cus­tomers are offered. The sev­er­al-month-long train­ing pro­gram for MR tech­ni­cians, for exam­ple, begins with a two-week basic train­ing course, fol­lowed by prod­uct-spe­cif­ic train­ing ses­sions with a final exam and cer­tifi­cate.

All sev­en train­ers at the facil­i­ty have many years of pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence in the field. Man­fred Schafhauser is one of them. He com­plet­ed his train­ing as an indus­tri­al elec­tri­cian at MR at the age of 16. Now 63, he smiles as he recalls: “Back then, I was told I’d prob­a­bly have to change careers five times over the course of my life. I remem­ber not being thrilled by that prospect at first, but that’s exact­ly how it turned out.”

After com­plet­ing his train­ing, he became a ser­vice tech­ni­cian and worked all over the world on behalf of Rein­hausen for 20 years. As a result, Schafhauser is famil­iar with vir­tu­al­ly every sit­u­a­tion an MR ser­vice tech­ni­cian might encounter.

In 2007, he decid­ed to pass on his knowl­edge to oth­er ser­vice tech­ni­cians. “Since then, I no longer trav­el to cus­tomers – they come to me,” says Schafhauser with satisfaction.He now works as part of a seve n‑person train­er team in day-today oper­a­tions and on the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the train­ing cen­ter. This also involves con­tin­u­ing his own edu­ca­tion and delv­ing into new prod­ucts: “Only when I myself know exact­ly what I need to do can I teach it to oth­ers,” says Schafhauser.

Demand is enormous

Over the past 50 years, MR’s ser­vice team has grown world­wide from 22 to around 360. Dur­ing the same time, a wide vari­ety of prod­ucts have been installed in trans­form­ers all over the world. This has led to high demand for train­ing and con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion for skilled work­ers. As a result, the Ger­man train­ing cen­ter, for exam­ple, is already ful­ly booked through the end of 2026.

This is one of the rea­sons why Rein­hausen decen­tral­ized the train­ing cen­ter con­cept and rolled it out inter­na­tion­al­ly. Now, knowl­edge can be shared in five addi­tion­al cer­ti­fied and mod­ern train­ing cen­ters around the world. In Chi­na, Brazil, the U.S., Malaysia, and South Africa, Rein­hausen is now train­ing spe­cial­ists who are nev­er far from cus­tomers in their respec­tive coun­tries. The dig­i­ti­za­tion of learn­ing con­tent as well as new tools also help ensure that as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble ben­e­fit from train­ing.

Digital training center

That is exact­ly what Ker­stin Fal­ter­meier is respon­si­ble for. She is strate­gi­cal­ly in charge of dig­i­tal train­ing con­cepts and is work­ing on a dig­i­tal train­ing cen­ter. To this end, she fre­quent­ly attends trade fairs, net­work­ing events, and oth­er gath­er­ings to stay informed about dig­i­tal solu­tions, new tech­nolo­gies, and strate­gies.

“For exam­ple, work­ing with CAD mod­els to dig­i­tal­ly break down a tap chang­er into its indi­vid­ual com­po­nents. Or the ear­ly attempts to use AI-pow­ered train­ing videos not only to trans­late into dif­fer­ent lan­guages, but to actu­al­ly have the train­er speak the lan­guages – with per­fect lip sync,” says Fal­ter­meier.

If a new solu­tion might be promis­ing for Reinhausen’s train­ing cen­ters, she con­ducts fur­ther research, runs tests, and eval­u­ates whether the solu­tion offers added val­ue.

The newest inno­va­tion – vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) train­ing – was intro­duced in 2026 and is cur­rent­ly being used by a group of six. They are cur­rent­ly doing the two-week basic train­ing dur­ing which they learn safe­ty rules, among oth­er things, and VR allows them to prac­tice the rules hands-on. While one of the par­tic­i­pants wears a head­set and com­pletes tasks, the oth­ers fol­low along on tablet screens. “In vir­tu­al train­ing, tasks can be per­formed through hand move­ments,” explains Ker­stin Fal­ter­meier as she assists the learn­ing group with tech­ni­cal ques­tions about the pro­gram.

Fal­ter­meier devel­oped and imple­ment­ed this train­ing con­tent togeth­er with the train­ers. “Com­pared to phys­i­cal mod­els, there is the clear advan­tage that errors and mal­func­tions can be sim­u­lat­ed repeat­ed­ly at will, and we can work on facil­i­ties that we don’t have on-site, such as sub­sta­tions. Nev­er­the­less, it remains impor­tant that mod­els can be han­dled and phys­i­cal­ly dis­as­sem­bled.”

Closeness and trust matter

Thanks to dig­i­tal train­ing for­mats, learn­ing is pos­si­ble any­time and any­where. The Rein­hausen train­ing plat­form offers e‑learning mod­ules for self­s­tudy; AI-gen­er­at­ed ques­tions pre­pare par­tic­i­pants for the­o­ret­i­cal exams; and in train­ing videos, train­ers speak flu­ent­ly in every con­ceiv­able lan­guage with the sup­port of AI. “That makes a huge dif­fer­ence,” Man­fred Schafhauser adds. “With com­plex con­tent, it’s an advan­tage to con­vey it in the respec­tive native lan­guage. Here on-site, we have our hands and feet to help us in case of mis­un­der­stand­ings. That’s miss­ing in the dig­i­tal world.”

In addi­tion to pro­fes­sion­al train­ing videos from the stu­dio or work­shop, the team also offers live dig­i­tal train­ing ses­sions. Ker­stin Fal­ter­meier is con­vinced that the future holds many pos­si­bil­i­ties: “If there are dig­i­tal twins for every prod­uct in the meta­verse, it will be even eas­i­er to bridge dis­tances and stay con­nect­ed in the exchange of knowl­edge.”

Nev­er­the­less, the fam­i­ly-like atmos­phere for which the Rein­hausen train­ing cen­ter is known will con­tin­ue to play a sig­nif­i­cant role in the future – Fal­ter­meier and Schafhauser are con­vinced of that. To this day, there are numer­ous guest books filled with entries and pho­tos from train­ing par­tic­i­pants from all over the world. Guests leave their entries on a page of the book as a token of thanks and to be remem­bered. Because here, dur­ing the train­ing ses­sions last­ing sev­er­al weeks, it’s not just work-relat­ed con­tent that’s shared, but also a bit of cul­ture and a good time.