Quality Policies and Process Sheets Are No Replacement for Worker Training
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.®
A very common fallacy in business operations is that a rough description of a task that should be performed listed in a quality policy or a quality assurance plan is effective. It may seem to be loosely sufficient to create an illusion that the training requirement of ISO/AS/IATF and Nadcap certification is met for now as is the company’s training requirement in general. Perhaps this false equivalency is reinforced by the additional fallacy that standard work instructions are the equivalent of on-the-job training plans. Too often this is used to defend the belief that standard work instructions or process sheets, perhaps with illustration, replace formal task-based training – especially when so much work went into creating them (but maybe not maintaining them).
Sometimes this leads to the rationalization that if the company keeps it simple and barely meets what an ISO/AS/IATF or Nadcap auditor might accept for their certification purposes, the training requirement is covered. But an auditor at that stage is just looking at what the company is intending to do, not how they carry it out. That is discovered later.
This false assumption is challenged when product or services turn up defective, and customers expect an explanation and a corrective action. This is when a weak, or no, connection can be drawn between the policy that guides quality standards, work processes and who trained and certified the employee to perform the task independently is discovered. This is when the records that exist, if any, do not support the assumption that mastery of the task ever occurred. This is when the customer loses faith in the producer or supplier – not just in the task(s) isolated in the one incident, but possibly performance of all tasks on which they depend.
click here to expandFrom a learning perspective, manufacturing environments present hurdle after hurdle to learning and mastering the work to be performed. Unrelenting production schedules, technology advancements and continuous improvement efforts – all offer little room for deliberate task-based training while changing the task out from under the worker while they are trying to learn and master it.
It is in the employer’s and employee’s interest that the job, and all of its required tasks, are mastered as quickly and completely as possible. But the spoils go to those employees who possess the core skills and necessary abilities to assimilate what they see around them and successfully self-teach themselves. Unfortunately, employers find those people hard to find as technology renders previous skill requirements moot (only the employer has those ever-changing, task-based skill requirements) and are reluctant to pay the experts they have accordingly to keep them. Read More
Your “Resident Expert” May Not Be an Expert Trainer, But Easily Could Be
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.®
Just because a worker is informally recognized as a “star performer,” it doesn’t necessarily follow that they can be an effective trainer. Employers like to think it is as easy as that, but seldom does it turn out to be the case. However, with a little structure, some tools and a little guidance these resident experts can, and often do, become expert trainers.
If one thinks about how an expert is measured and recognized, it is usually by subjective, mostly anecdotal measures. The worker performs job-related tasks quickly, consistently and completely. This implies few mistakes, performance that is mostly within specifications and standards of performance, and no one can remember anything rejected or returned as scrap or rework.
Thinking it through a little further, one might struggle to explain how the expert performer developed these traits. Someone showed them how to perform a task, and repetitive performance developed new, retained skills. They are now operating as a “robot” while performing a task, seldom thinking about the subtleties and nuances of each task (filed in memory long ago), which makes them fast, consistent workers – something the employer can notice an appreciate.
click here to expandBut if we ask “who trained this expert,” “how was he or she trained,” or “what specifications and standards were emphasized,” we come up empty. By just playing the role of a trainee, and allowing one of these experts to train you on a task, will reveal a lot as to what the new-hire or cross-trainee can expect. If we compare this expert’s task performance to other peer experts, we probably will notice slight differences in performance between them, which means workers that each trained may be trained differently on the same task. Sometimes these differences can be subtle and of no consequence, sometimes they become a point of contention, lead to confusion and/or unsafe and incorrect task performance.
Every work environment is less than ideal for learning. Production pressures, personality clashes, learning style and teaching style differences, and departmental boundary incursions do not make it easy for a trainer to train or a trainee to learn without structure and guidance. If any of our experts train the next wave of new-hires or cross-trainees without structure, tools and standards – the building blocks of “best practice” performance – some of the expertise might not transfer and the differences between them become more obvious with each wave. This can often lead to frustrating confrontation between shifts, with one shift declaring the other two shifts as incompetent. Read More
Two Common, Unfortunate Mistakes: The Importance of Setting Up Separate Accounts When Receiving Training Grant
Funds
by Frank Gibson, CEO and Interim Chairman of the Board of the North-Central Ohio Employer-Based Worker Training Partnership, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center
Two common, unfortunate mistakes that can derail a company’s sincere effort to address the training gap at their firm are easily overcome, but toxic if unaddressed. Getting upper-management on-board with trying to build a deliberate training infrastructure is not easy, as most who have tried have found out. Taking preemptive measures to avoid these land mines seems worth the while.
The first, the champion who took the initiative to create a training strategy, lobby for it and attempted to implement it at their operation fails to establish proper leadership of that effort. W. Edwards Deming often said, “divide responsibility and no one is responsible.” And something as important as establishing a new, deliberate training program to address the neglect of the past has to be led by someone who recognizes that fact, understands the implications and knows how to lead the effort to successfully reach its goal.
click here to expandSome firms believe that putting two or three stakeholders in charge, for which none of them have the background and experience, to manage a training strategy is sufficient to lead the effort. This false notion that “political buy-in” outweighs selecting the right leader, or elevating people with time on their hands to something they lack experience for is sufficient, can be a fatal miscalculation. This usually leads to the project falling far short of its goals and/or interest waning as results seem to come up short of expectations. This can lead to those in charge vacillating between taking blame or credit instead of making sure the project succeeds. Another example is when the “leadership group” is lopsided and one, or a few of, the team has more knowledge and experience in setting up and implementing a training strategy but lacks the votes on critical decisions. This can lead to conflict and hard feelings that jeopardize the cohesiveness of the group and its message. Yet another example is that the “power vacuum” is a opportunity for one or two ambitious designated leaders to put aside their lack of subject knowledge and experience for a speculative chance to show upper management what they are capable of. This can go one of two ways, and one is at the expense of the training project and everyone who sincerely supported it. “Deming also said, “You have one chance to train a worker, only one so don’t muff it.” Picking and supporting a good leader for something as critical as training of necessary workers is a valid solution to avoiding this dilemma.
The second mistake often made that can sink a worthy project resides in the accounting department. Read More
Is Entrepreneurism in America Still a Revered Thing?
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.®
Just as the economy has bifurcated into two economies, as confirmed by the “income inequality gap,” so has the reverence and appreciation for local, small to mid-size businesses as compared to concentrated, behemoth multinational companies and Private Equity or Hedge Fund portfolios. It seems support to small businesses has become more of platitudes than substance and support for independent mid-size businesses is very selective. The large publicly traded and private equity funded corporations have access to exponentially growing capital sources. Mid-size companies rely on regional banks, which are few and far between. Small firms have access to, well, hardly anything unless acquired by a bigger firm.
The focus of most economic development organizations has been on attracting the largest of companies and employers to the region. Each locale competes to reel in the “whales,” offering tax breaks, expensive infrastructure improvements and monetary incentives to companies that can access many sources of private and public capital as well as bank financing on their own – socializing the risk and privatizing the profit in the hope that the benefits of doing so will outweigh the costs. Each locale wants to be able to announce the most optimistic of predictions for the region to much fanfare and publicity. Politically, this is appealing, but most citizens have come to understand the fragility of the arrangement and how fleeting the proposed benefits to the community and region in return have become.
Some companies have learned how to play this game well, moving operations around from state to state, country to country to take advantage of the public’s generosity. And whenever economic adversity arrives or balance sheets are weak and need perking up to maintain share price and attractiveness, they pick up and move operations and jobs and leave a community rattled in the wake.
Some very visible cases of the risk of “putting so many eggs in one basket” exists. “Michigan Loses 5 Plants And Over 13,000 Jobs in Sudden Blow to US Manufacturing Base. “Intel Announces Mass Job Cuts, Sounds Alarm for Ohio, “CEO Lip-Bu Tan said the company expected “workforce reductions and attrition” to reduce its headcount to 75,000 by the end of 2025. This compares to the 108,900 employees Intel boasted at the end of last year, per an annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). “Intel’s ‘Ohio One’ project in Licking County has already suffered delays. Now the company said it will “further slow the pace of construction in Ohio to ensure spending is aligned with market demand.” An Intel spokesperson clarified that the projected timeline for completion of the first fab is 2030-2031, and that work is still actively happening at the Ohio One site.” “Ohio lured Intel’s chip plant with $2B incentive package.”
click here to expandIn Wisconsin, Foxconn promised a $10 billion investment in Wisconsin and the creation of 13,000 jobs. “The state legislature passed a $2.85 billion tax incentive package that required Foxconn to meet certain hiring and capital investment benchmarks during the next 10 years in order to receive the tax credits. The company also received a $150 million break in sales taxes, bringing the total state package to $3 billion. Foxconn largely failed to deliver on its original promises.”
Big money has big access to even more big money that increasingly controls access to markets by creating barriers to entry behind them. They protect their portfolio while determining who can join a portfolio or be driven under. The unconstrained mergers and acquisitions over the last 3 decades has led to a concentration of market share so intense these days most small businesses can only hope to serve local markets and communities. What is lost is that these small businesses can lead to stable growth and employment opportunities that can sustain communities and regions. They are not likely to pick up and move because it serves little purpose. They do not require the huge infrastructure investments, large cash incentives and breaks as a multinational. But they do need access to capital to grow. With that they can create their own markets.
“The U.S. Small Business Administration defines a “small business” as a firm with revenue ranging from $1 million to over $40 million and an employee workforce of under 500. Based on the SBA’s definition, the 33.2 million small businesses in the United States make up 99.9% of all firms across the country.” Read More
Read the full August, 2025 Proactive Technologies Report™ newsletter, including linked industry articles and online presentation schedules.
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