When I was appointed to a VP of Operations position I decided the first place to focus was in understanding and defining customer value. Not only for the leadership team but for everyone, value stream workers, invoicing, supply chain, human resources, purchasing… everyone.
I started by talking to the people closest to our customers, sales and customer service. This was an eye opener as I was immediately confronted with many incidents of poor quality and delivery.
To better understand where the problems were coming from I started reviewing the latest and completed customer complaint 8D analysis reports. Almost all of the reports had something in common, they listed “re-train employee” as one of the main actions. Re-train employee was used as a corrective action for many different cause types like:
a) did not follow procedure,
b) could not correctly perform quality control,
c) selecting wrong material,
d) preventative maintenance not performed
e) wrong setup
f) no standard operating procedure,
g) wrong lifting procedure, etc.
How often does your organization have to re-train (or as I call it training re-work)? Is it indicative of an in-effective training program?
The cause type examples listed above are the result of not incorporating values and preventative techniques within the training program.
A well designed training program will facilitate the learning of important steps, key points of each important step and the reasons. The reasons can be stated and associated with customer, employee, and organizational values.
The Lean tool of Training Within Industry (TWI) defines Key Points as; What will make the job easier to complete, Avoid injury, and Make or break the job. Here are some examples
1) Key Point – slide thumb center to left then center to right, white area only
– Reason – Prevent customer instruction label from curling
2) Key Point – Use patient Lift and Transfer hoist
– Reason – Prevents back and shoulder injuries.
The first Key Point highlights what has to be completed by the worker and the Reason for Key Point brings in a statement of why it is of value to customers.
The 2nd Key Point highlights a preventative measure and the Reason brings in a statement of why it is a value to the employee. Both state the best method known today but could improve if employees performing these tasks find a better method.
The process to determine these extremely valuable Key Points starts by utilizing the employees who have been trained as a trainer in this new value add program. A standard work document is established by a trained trainer observing employees known to perform the job task effectively and efficiently. Each observation session is also videotaped. The video of the task performed is then reviewed by a diverse team to validate Key Points, Reason for Key Points, and if there were any missed or additional Key Points of value. This validation process is from a Quality, Engineering, or Safety, Environmental, Ergonomic policy perspective. The validated standard work document is now ready to use as the training document for employees. Finally, after the initial training the Trainer plans observations of the people they have trained to confirm the learner is performing the work according to the standard work document, if not, correctional training is performed.
The planning of the standard work document development, when people will be trained and when observations will occur are visually managed and supported through daily Gemba walks by the leaders. This element of the program has proven to cut the time to effectively train employees in half.
Through the identification of Key Points and their associated reasons, customer, employee, and organization values become integrated. Employees will learn and practice these values from almost day one.
As employees start to become accustomed with this training concept they will identify and bring forward even more improvements to the current standard work document.
The training program naturally becomes an integrated part of the continuous improvement program through continuous development. And because the employees are the ones identifying the Key Points they will take ownership and become more and more engaged.