Reviewing Your Skills Matrix: An Example
In this article we will run you through the type of review process you should adhere to when reviewing your Skills Matrix at a yearly interval.
Reviewing the Tasks On the Skills Matrix
To begin the review (or create a new skills matrix) you run through all of the major tasks that are needed in one cell or area of production to complete a production unit. This list is tailored to the area and should encompass the skills of the workforce.
- drilling holes
- using measuring equipment
- assembly Widget A to Widget B
- old brackets
- printing labels
- kitting for assembly
This may seem like an overwhelming tasks to begin with; start with a small focused area (a production cell or area of production) and list the top level process steps.
Reviewing the People on the Skills Matrix
Once you have created your list of tasks, you can start to list the people who usually work in the area. For each of these tasks, we need to determine their skill level. We rank skill level into 4 levels:
- Being Training / Basic understanding (Level 1)
- Able to perform task with supervision (Level 2)
- Able to perform task without supervision (Level 3)
- Able to train others (Level 4)
Develop a Training Plan
Developing a training plan is the next important step when reviewing our skills matrix. Identify where you have sufficient coverage of skills and the areas where you need more people trained in which tasks. As with any plan, we need to identify:
- Who is trained,
- What are they to be trained in
- Who will do the training
- When will the training take place
- How do we determine the person has been adequately trained
Using our standard work documentation makes the training task much easier and lets the operators focus on the skill in the tasks, rather than trying to remember the finer details. Deciding to post the skills matrix on the Visual Management Board will depend on your company culture. While these continuous improvement tasks may seem like huge projects, they are easily broken into small tasks that can be delegated. The challenge is to reeve progress regularly and not let production be used as an excuse.
