|
Original Date: 11/03/1996
Revision Date: 01/18/2007
Best Practice : Training Activities
Oak Ridge Centers for Manufacturing Technology (ORCMT) realized a major problem was developing in early 1993. Although downsizing reduced the workforce, the remaining employees lacked the cross-training in skills of those eliminated. This realization became especially obvious when attempts to hire new employees with these skills proved difficult, if not impossible. ORCMT held meetings with unions, technical personnel, and management to determine a strategy for the future. The result produced a new method for performing work on-site at ORCMT and providing assistance to off-site educational institutes.
Meetings with schools and community groups provided a way to incorporate the teaching of students and instructors into the production skills sought by ORCMT. The Mobile Manufacturing Learning Center, a trailer outfitted with everything necessary to make a production part, traveled throughout Tennessee to enlighten young students about the manufacturing field. ORCMT established career days with local schools and provided vocational students with an opportunity to visit its facility and learn how to use tools, such as lasers, grinders, coordinate measuring machines, and milling machines.
Training activities were established at ORCMT. Employees began receiving cross-training courses, on company time, so their technical expertise could be broadened. In addition, the first of the train-the-trainer classes was completed in early 1994 and proved to be very effective and successful. Craftworkers became proactive and were very instrumental with the marketing of the business development initiatives.
Presently, the training activities established by ORCMT have broadened the skills of its employees, initiated referrals from skilled craftsman for engineering training, provided simulator models for training classes, and generated a skills campus trainers survey in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In addition, the Mobile Manufacturing Learning Center educates young students throughout the state on the importance of manufacturing skills and provides a free opportunity for them to acquire some craft skills.
For more information see the
Point of Contact for this survey.
|
