What is Competitive Manufacturing?
Competitive Manufacturing training is an accredited training program recognised in both Australia and New Zealand. At the certificate III and IV level the program is designed to provide the skills and support to people in manufacturing. There are some variations across states but on average the program takes between 18 months to 2 years to complete and it is designed to support your site to improve your production system and results.
A better approach to training
Traditional classroom based training just doesn't work that well in a manufacturing environment. For one thing many of the people working at the operator or frontline leadership level don't learn particularly well in that way. They need to know right upfront how what they are learning applies to their job and how it will benefit them. And they have a responsibility to the process they run and don't want to spend too much time away from their work.
Our approach to the program is focused on ensuring that the training and implementation coaching that we provide is directed towards the practical application of what is learnt so that it opens your people up to learning and your business is improved, in both the short and long term, by their application of what they learn.
In Australian industry resources are tight. Skilled people are in high demand and people with little experience often find themselves in frontline leadership roles. Those businesses who are riding the resources or technology boom have plenty of money but time for training is constrained as you push to meet demand. For those who are struggling to compete with lower cost competitors or affected by other sustainability issues training costs might be a major factor in your decisions to undertake training.
Leadership training and business improvement
This program is designed to act as an additional resource to your business improvement program. The certificate training is for the frontline leadership and potential leaders at Certificate IV level and operators at the certificate III. Lean Competitive Manufacturing however is not something that the people at the shop floor do leaving senior management to continue on as usual trying to apply traditional command and control management.
Consequently we work with senior management to develop their ability to lead in a Lean Competitive Manufacturing business. That means establishing and cascading a clearly articulated vision for the business and a strategy to achieve it. Then getting the management of each of the functional areas along the value stream to clarify what their people need to do to achieve their part in the strategy and putting in place KPI's and a visual scoreboard to display the resulting Improvement Plans and the progress as they are worked on. In short we help your business to implement Lean Management to support the training in lean tools and change management we provide to the trainees.
We do offer this service without the frontline certificate training in a service we call Implementation Coaching however the advantage of undertaking our Competitive Manufacturing program is the cost is included in the program and potentially fully subsidised by the government if your people are eligible for traineeship funding.
Too good to be true?
LEAN Rt is a part of SIRF Roundtables a member based organisation that has been established to support research and development in operational excellence. Our objective is to work with our customers in a partnership where we provide the specialist skills and knowledge that they need to transform the way they run their businesses in the most effective way possible. Our close association with our members allows us to accelerate the process improvement across industry spreading great ideas and worked solutions that benefit everyone involved. Our members call it R & D - Request and Duplicate.
Still not sure?
Generally the issue that people have to deal with when deciding to undertake a program like this fall into one of four categories.
No Time
No Money
Won't Work
Won't work for us
No Time - Finding the time to make people available for training, especially when your process is unstable, is a genuine issue for many business leaders.
The question to ask yourself is - if we don't do anything different, if we don't develop the necessary skills in our people - how are things ever going to get any better? How can people be expected to "engage" and change if not given the knowledge and tools they need to do things differently?
We also don't believe that it is the quantity of time that is spent in training that makes it worthwhile - often training is padded out to justify the price that is charged by providers. We don't do that.
LEAN Rt delivers the training to your people at your site and we have streamlined the training into training sessions that can be delivered in as little as two hours of interactive training. Trainees learn the concepts of Competitive Manufacturing such as 5S, Quick Changeover, Mistake Proofing and Root Cause Analysis through simulations and looking at how the methods apply to your site. Then they decide on projects that provide the opportunity to apply their skills in alignment for the improvement plans that have been developed for their work areas.
Where the learning actually takes place is in the workplace when they integrate the concepts they have learnt by doing things differently and improving the process they are responsible for in the workplace. Our facilitator also spends a lot of time on-site working one to one or in work groups using an Implementation Coaching methodology so that people really get how to apply what they learn and to help them to overcome obstacles or road blocks.
No Money - The federal government recognises the driving need for Australian industry to remain competitive in a world market undergoing rapid change and Competitive Manufacturing training is one strategy to improve the productivity of Australian industry. The training attracts traineeship funding of $5,100 per eligible trainee making our program cost neutral for trainees who qualify for the funding.
Funding is available for trainees who have not completed a diploma or university qualification and who have not completed a certificate III or higher qualification (this includes trade qualifications) less than 7 years ago.
It won't work The LEAN Rt Competitive Manufacturing program is heavily based on the principals of lean Manufacturing derived from the study of the Toyota Production System. Toyota is a highly successful business in a difficult market due to the development of a strong culture of employee engagement in continuous improvement. Employees at Toyota are constantly engaged in the process of improving their production system. At Toyota all employees understand that they have two responsibilities - day to day production and improving the business for the future by eliminating waste.
It is a proven system that has taken Toyota from being virtually bankrupt after the 2nd world war to being one of the most successful companies in the world. Emulating the success of Toyota is much more than just adopting a few of the tools that they have developed. The tools are used to serve a purpose which is to remove waste from their operating system. Implementing lean won't work if you just attempt to bolt on a few tools to your existing management system - the people driving the change will never achieve more than lukewarm adoption of the tools from the general workforce. Lean Management has to be implemented as well and our program is designed to help you to do that.
It won't work for us - Since it was realised that Toyota was doing something special with their production system it has been one of the most studied companies in the world. This has lead to the deployment of a number of tools which most people in industry have at least heard of and many are applying with varying degrees of success. It would be a safe bet that there are more factories that show evidence of failed implementation attempts than those that have achieve anything like the results that Toyota has.
This has lead to all sorts of "reasons" for the lack of success - "it works for Toyota because they are Japanese and are more disciplined, our people are more ...." Toyota has exported their production system to all the countries they operate in with a high degree of success using local workers and management who have been taught the principals of the TPS and are expected to apply them.
"It might work for Toyota but they make cars. We are different, we make ...." It's true that many of the tools that Toyota has developed such as Single Piece Flow and Pull Systems are finely tuned to their production model but the principals of making in the smallest possible lot size to reduce wastage and reduce as much as possible the time between paying and getting paid apply to any business. The tools that are used, how they apply and what outcomes are sought may vary but the principals of eliminating waste apply to any situation.
Our trainers all have an industry background so they understand manufacturing and we work with a wide variety of companies with every conceivable production system - lean principals apply to all, lean management systems apply to all, lean tools are applied to achieve outcomes in a manner that is unique to each individual company.
Those that find it difficult to sustain the early benefits of implementing lean methods generally attempt to apply the tools in a cookie cutter approach which can actually cause problem - such as attempting to implement pull systems into a very unstable process may damage delivery to the customer. Or they run isolated Kaizen events where success is measured by the number of events run over a set period of time rather than planning improvement activities based on the strategic objectives of the business. There is a place for opportunistic improvement but it is unsustainable if it is the only form of improvement going on as it hides the fact that the difficult issues are not being tackled and the tough questions are not being asked.
LEAN Rt Workshops
Since Implementing lean management means that everyone has to do things differently it is important that everyone in senior management understands what lean is and what the objectives are. They need to know enough of what is possible to set high expectations. If your business has low expectations and improvement goals then they can probably be achieved without having to change much. There is no reason for management to move out of their comfort zones and into doing things in a new way such as working collaboratively with their teams and engaging the entire workforce in focused, directed improvement activities.
LEAN Rt runs workshops to help with this "education process" for Senior leadership right down to the shop floor teams. Current workshops include.
The LEAN Rt Competitive Manufacturing program is designed to put in place a system that supports improvement in any type of operation and then to provide training to your people in the most appropriate tools for improving your production system.
Assessment
Certificate Training in Australia is competency based, which means that assessment is based on the trainees ability to apply the concepts in the workplace. In the case of Competitive Manufacturing that means undertaking continuous improvement activities.
Trainees are then assessed on the workplace improvement projects they do. In business, improvement activities are usually performed in teams and so in Competitive Manufacturing participants are generally assessed on their activities as part of an improvement team, for example applying 5S principals to organising their work area with their normal work team or undertaking a Root Cause Analysis as part of a multi-function team.
Evidence of competence has to be collected and it is examples of real work performed on the job such as copies of action plans, meeting notes,
before and after photos, audit forms and other records of improvement achieved. The program is action oriented and does not involve writing reports or reading
of academic materials beyond the scope of normal workplace activities.
What's the difference between Cert III and Cert IV?
Certificate III is based on the participants ability to work effectively in a Competitive Manufacturing environment and apply lean methods to their work activities. Generally a trainee at Certificate III level would not be expected to have the skills to create a Competitive Manufacturing System but they should be able to apply the tools in their workplace.
Certificate IV is for frontline leaders and trainees would be expected to contribute to the development and maintenance of a Competitive Manufacturing production system. They would not be expected to do this without the support and input from senior management. Even in the flattest of organisational structures senior management must provide the strategic direction for the business.
The role of leadership
Visible leadership from the senior management is key in establishing a continuous improvement culture. When expectations for improvement and a clear strategic direction for the business are not set by the senior leaders the managers in functional areas can only focus on their own areas and compete for resources. It is the role of senior management to align the functional areas of the business through the strategic deployment of metrics that drive behaviour designed to improve the business as whole.
LEAN Rt has developed a method to facilitate this process which we have incorporated into the Competitive Manufacturing training we deliver or which we can assist you with through Implementation Coaching for your senior leadership team.
Perhaps the most significant thing that you must understand about lean manufacturing is that it can not be successfully installed in a command and control type management system. If you want all employees to be engaged in continuous improvement then they have to have enough information available to them to make informed decisions, training so that they understand waste and understand the tools they can use to eliminate it and an effective issue management system to handle issues that arise that are beyond their ability to resolve.
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