Cross-Training Workers After Lean Efforts Builds Capacity Using Existing Staff

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Lean activities to redesign processes for better efficiency in a department, or between departments, sometimes result in “surplus” workers – partially or in whole units. It is the subjective priority of Lean practitioners since it is a tangible illustration of a successful Lean improvement. Processes that previously needed 3 people to complete may now only need two, if the efficiency were discovered. So what happens to that one person that has valuable acquired expertise, representing a significant investment by the employer? Would the wise outcome of Lean efforts be to just cut that person from the lineup?

The short answer is most likely not. Any efficiency and cost savings brought about by the Lean redesign would be offset by the loss of the expertise for which the investment has already been made. Most likely the reason for the Lean was not in reaction to no return on worker investment, but rather a desire to increase the return on worker investment.

If the worker is reassigned to another department, and no task-based training infrastructure is in place, that reassignment may lower the efficiency there which, again, reduces the gains made by the Lean effort. So part of the Lean effort must be the deliberate cross-training of workers in temporary assignments or longer-term reassignments to other departments that seem to have the need for increased staffing, perhaps as a result of the increased throughput achieved from the Lean effort in the upstream department in the chain.

Another outcome of a lean effort may not include moving personnel, but either equipment or processes out of the Leaned department into another department up or downstream, often without structured training to absorb the new activities and maintain efficiency. Here the loss of gains made are similar if no training on how to perform the processes or run the equipment is provided.

In an efficiently run organization, every department has detailed, documented best practices and training materials that are always maintained, and training tracking systems to ensure cross-training occurs quickly and to the necessary level of performance and capacity. In an organization that does not have these systems, any gains and efficiency expected from Lean efforts may be unnoticeable or, worse yet, non-existent or negative.

Unfortunately if Lean effort results continue to prove disappointing, the first reaction by everyone seems to be to discredit Lean as a waste of time or abandon it all together. If only the analysis of the effort extended through the full implementation of Lean efforts and included the effects of relocated employees, equipment and processes to other departments and the subsequent gains/losses seen there, this point would be much clearer. Proactive Technologies’ system of managed human resource development facilitates this control and supports the quality-based implementation of Lean efforts by linking best practice processes with task-based training, and easily managing the implementation for change. Managing each employee’s “level of worker capacity” through changes in processes, equipment, assignments and technological evolution is by design, not chance.

Learn more about how to integrate the PROTECH© system of managed human resource development with Lean and other quality programs. Sit in on one of the upcoming live online presentations or schedule your own. If your interested is peaked, follow this up with a live onsite presentation for you and your staff.