Achilles Heel of Manufacturing Organizations: Worker Training

We all know how important Worker Training is, for a manufacturing organization. We know that the activities performed by the workers may possibly be the only Value-Added activities of the organization. Yet, Worker Training seem to be the most ignored aspect of an organization. Many organizations have practically no worker training, while a vast majority have a bare minimum of worker training, basically to cover the statutory requirements.

The reasons behind the anomaly could be many. However, it would be interesting to look into a few obvious ones so as to figure out potential solutions to overcome this debility. Here are a few that I could think of:

i. It is not a part of the KPI. No extra marks for conducting worker training. While this cannot be corrected per se, managers must be educated about the impact on the performance on account of lack of worker training.

ii. No time to spare. Now, this is interesting and all too familiar. Why do managers not have the time for this critical need? If we look into what takes away most of the time of managers, it is report making and reporting, including attending meetings. Meetings best reflect the organizational culture and any change in the meeting-etiquette will have to flow from the top.

iii. Conducting worker training is not glamorous. It does not sound exciting. There is precious little you can do about it.

iv. Supervisors wrongly assume that the operators know enough. The operators know more about the machine and the process on which they are working, often for years together. No wonder, the supervising staff often assume that the operators and workers know a lot, or at least ‘enough’. There is still a lot of value addition that the supervising and managing staff can provide to the operator. For one, the supervising staff are often more qualified and more knowledgeable about the technical aspects of the process, even if they may not know as much about the process or process activities as the operator. Also they have better awareness of the system and the value stream. Supervisors can and must feel confident in conducting worker training.

v. Lack of clarity on the responsibility of ‘Process Control’. This happens because of the way the job profile of junior production staff is defined. Let us delve into this further. The key responsibility of the junior production staff is to ensure that the production process goes unhindered; and correctly so. Supervisors and junior production staff are, therefore, focused on program clarity, material and machine readiness, and availability of utilities and, may be, man-power availability. Once that is taken care of, there is precious little to be done. Of course, they have to support the senior production manager(s) in information compilation and reporting. Amidst all these key responsibilities, the responsibility of ensuring Process Control is lost. It is imperative that this functional responsibility is discharged with due diligence in order to have optimal outputs.

It is imperative to develop a culture of conducting worker training regularly, and the above impediments point out the factors that may help us achieve the same.

It is critical that the junior production staff spend more time on the process/machine/shopfloor. One way of doing it is to have Audit Checklists in place which need be conducted regularly. This will encourage the staff to be more involved with the production process, and not just be in the support function. In many organizations, the Process Control Audits are conducted by a resource form another function, e.g. QA or Process Control Team, etc. It is far more expeditious to have them conducted by the function itself, and at a higher frequency. Further, the effectiveness of the Audits by staff members will be greatly enhanced if review of the Audit reports and Actions taken thereof, is conducted regularly by the process owner/function head.

The Audits will ensure closer interaction between the staff and workers, besides resulting in better Process Controls. As a bonus, it will help in identifying the training needs and improve the process knowledge of the staff. Besides, the staff will have more in-depth practical knowledge of the process rather than having a ring-side view. All these will help in developing a worker training culture in the organization.

There are any number of topics on which worker training may be conducted. Organizations must tailor-make its Training Modules based on their individual needs. For critical jobs, Training Modules should be so developed that Knowledge and Skills may be imparted in the most effective manner, so that on-boarding could be done seamlessly. There are methodologies to develop Training Modules for specific jobs that address organizational needs, and they are not very difficult to adopt.

While on this, it is important to emphasize that training need not be conducted in the training center only. 10-15 minute training conducted on the shopfloor can be just effective. What is most important is that there should be a continuous communication, not just a once-in-a-while affair. It may help to designate a particular time slot for regular communication to the workers wherein whoever can spare the time may join. Since the communication is in small capsules, no harm in repeating them. What is critical is regular communication. One last bit of wisdom: worker training should be internal, conducted by the staff from the same function, to the extent possible. This may be the most effective tool to develop a high performing organizational culture.

Designing the Training Modules and ensuring proper delivery of the training and evaluating the outcomes thereof, calls for another discussion.