Heidenheim. At the German Skills Competition for Technical Draughtsmen 2012, the 19-year-old Mathias Ludyga took first place and won the gold medal. Ludyga is in his third year of training as a technical draughtsman at Voith. He will represent Germany at the World Skills Competition held in Leipzig next year. The patron is Chancellor Angela Merkel.

At the beginning of November, Mathias Ludyga spent a week at the venue of the competition in Sulzbach near Saarbrücken. During the three-day event, the participants were faced by a new task every day, and the tasks were truly challenging. "The level of difficulty was definitely higher than that of the final exams at the Chamber of Industry and Commerce," says Eugen Brenner, who heads the training program for technical draughtsmen in Heidenheim. Brenner, who also co-developed the new job description for product designers at the BiBB (Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training, Berlin) once participated himself in a World Skills Competition. In 1981 he won the gold medal as a steel construction mechanic in Atlanta (USA). At the time he already stood out by a characteristic that he now passes on to young people: concentrated and targeted work from the first moment right to the end. "Give it your best shot and take your foot off the gas only after you have reached your goal" is the work ethic he instills in his apprentices.

Vocational training has a long tradition at Voith. The first training workshop was set up in Heidenheim as early as 1910. Since then the company has been firmly committed to first-class occupational education. Voith adapts the contents and methods of the training programs to the current and future requirements of the market. Just recently, in 2010, Voith initiated its advanced Training Concept 2010, parts of which have already been implemented. The outlined training standards not only apply at the company's headquarters but all over the world. A visible expression of this philosophy are the ground-breaking ceremonies held in autumn this year for new training centers in both Heidenheim and Kunshan, China.

Voith sets standards in the markets energy, oil & gas, paper, raw materials and transport & automotive. Founded in 1867, Voith employs more than 40,000 people, generates €5.6 billion in sales, operates in over 50 countries around the world and is today one of the biggest family-owned companies in Europe.