Train the trainer · now recruiting
The courses are built. The bench needs to grow.
Ninety courses across fourteen tracks, a textbook in its tenth edition, and 19,800 engineers already through the room. ETS is recruiting practicing engineers to learn the material, co-teach it, and deliver it — in Grand Rapids and at the plant.
First open date: October 20–22, Grand Rapids — the best way to see the room before you apply.
How it works
Four steps. No one teaches cold.
We recruit people who design, mold, analyze or defend plastic parts for a living. A publication record helps. A failure you can explain on a whiteboard matters more.
You sit the seminar, get the slide deck, the case histories and the instructor notes, and co-teach a date with Paul A. Tres before you ever stand up alone.
Open enrollment, in-plant, or private cohort. ETS handles registration, the room, the materials and the invoice. You teach.
Repeat engagements, co-authored updates to the material, and a path to owning a track. Your name goes on the catalog only once you have taught it.
Where we need people
Every track is open. Some are thin.
The flagship automotive seminar stays with Paul A. Tres. Everything around it — failure analysis, composites, EV, crash, compliance, regulated product — needs instructors who have done the work. Pick the track you can defend.
What we ask
The bar is the room, not the résumé.
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01 Fifteen or more years designing, processing or analyzing plastic parts — or a deep adjacent practice such as crashworthiness, composites, or regulated-product design.
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02 Comfort teaching engineers who will argue with you. The room is senior. The slides do not save a weak answer.
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03 Willingness to teach from the ETS material first, then extend it. The case histories are the product.
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04 Availability for at least two delivery dates a year, in Grand Rapids or at a client plant.
What you get
Delivery days are paid. Development of new material is scoped and paid separately. In-plant dates pay a premium because they travel.
Registration, invoicing, the room, printed binders, the book, and the follow-up. Your name on the work you deliver.
Faculty are not listed on the public catalog until a trainer has co-taught and been contracted. That is deliberate.
The whole practice
One record. Eight ways to use it.
Three days in Grand Rapids with the author. 1,300 slides, real case histories, twenty minutes with him.
90 coursesThe catalogFailure, composites, EV, crash, compliance, regulated product. Open enrollment, in-plant, or your own cohort.
Your floorIn-plantThe same course at your plant, on your parts. Sixty-three companies have already hosted it.
The book10th editionDesigning Plastic Parts for Assembly. The seminars are taught from it. Read the prefaces first.
The recordExpert witnessTrial and deposition work since 1997. Plastics failures, explained to a jury.
The toolsCalculatorsSnap-fit and living-hinge, free. The same equations the seminar spends a day on.
Cited answersChatETSAsk the corpus. Answers come back with the source, not a guess.
The workspaceETS BuildDesign, FEA, DFM, PPAP and FMEA in one browser. Early access for pilot teams.
Next step
See the room first.
The October 20–22 seminar in Grand Rapids is the fastest way to understand what you would be teaching. Apply after, or apply now and attend as part of onboarding.
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