The key issue for most organizations are increasing revenue or decreasing cost. At the present time, most companies are in the decreasing cost mode. Training events are getting canceled or postponed in the effort to decrease cost. Training budgets are often the first to get cut when business takes a downturn. Time is also scarce. With cutbacks in practically all departments there is little time to participate in training events.
So, how do we correct this and train our workforce. Maybe, we have been going about most of our training wrong. Michael Balle, author of the Lean Manager and The Goldmine brought up how Toyota creates training opportunity. He said; “Now, let me take an example, for instance, an andon system, what an andon system is when operators have a problem, they pull a rope, have lights, lights with a station and their team leader has about a minute to two to react and if not the line stops. What happens is that every time an operator has a doubt, they pull the cord, the team leader comes and what the team leader does is to check whether there’s a problem or not.
I’m wandering around looking at pictures of guys and going, “mm, very good for management reactivity, yes?” I said. The Toyota representative says, “no, operator training,” so of course I went back to him, “you mean management reactivity?” I said, “no, it has nothing to do with management reactivity, it’s operator training,” so we’re having this back and forth and he says, “OK, what do you mean by operator training?” So, he says “this is an opportunity to have a conversation about work centers and about standardized work with operators, conjointly. Now when the line actually stops, then yes, it becomes a management reactivity issue, but we don’t want to stop the line.”
Viewing training from this perspective results in a new context for organizations. They will be working more closely, more hands on with the individuals actually doing the work. It will also identify more opportunities for improvement. It may identify skills that are lacking and prioritize the actual improvements for them, but don’t call it training.
Focusing on improvement, and not training, requires a totally different thought process. This is a great STEP IN STARTING A LEAN CULTURE? WHAT DO YOU THINK?
P.S. Some people may call this Kaizen!