By Alan Ifould
In a recent post to this blog, “Clean Room vs the SubFab: The 5 key reasons to align ”, we looked at some of the differences between personnel and equipment in the fab and subfab. As we work to align more closely the practices and behaviors of personnel in these critical environments, we must look for the best way to leverage the differences to optimize collaboration. This post looks at how we train and motivate people to strive for excellence in their own environment and in collaboration with others, drawing heavily on insights from Richard Swayne, Head of Training and Development at Edwards.
To bring our knowledge of vacuum and abatement to bear on the challenges in the cleanroom we use our Operational Excellence model. This model was first described by Shigeo Shingo, a Japanese industrial engineer, whose thinking is rooted in his early work at Toyota, and whose name is now identified with his approach to integrating principles, tools, and people to achieve operational excellence. Industrie 4.0, which emphasizes the need to train people to use and work alongside technology, has been a game changer. Industrie 5.0, the next step, shifts its emphasis to the skills and creativity of people as it seeks to integrate Shingo’s thinking about cultures, behaviors, and systems in relationship to technology, knowledge, safety, and more. We are guided by this model in our efforts to both enable and motivate our people to learn and develop to their full potential, while continuing to ensure that we have the right knowledge, skills, and behaviors to meet our customers’ expectations and support sustainable growth.
Learning is all about achieving behavioral change through the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and attitude, blended to form a competence. While you can be trained with the knowledge and skills needed to drive a car, you cannot become a great driver without the right attitude. In previous posts we have stressed the importance we place on operational excellence. Achieving operational excellence requires commitment to continuous improvement which is present in every aspect of practice and behavior. We cannot deliver excellence by simply putting someone through a training course. We know that we are approaching our goal only when our onsite teams exhibit operationally excellent behaviors in everything they do, as naturally as breathing.
With technical training, it is easy to teach someone the desired outcome, for example, when you close valve A, the reading on gauge B should increase to C etc. Behavioral training is different because people are different, and they react to information in different ways. It can be challenging to train someone to do something differently if the outcome they expect is not evident. To be effective, training must provide the learner with context, so that they can translate the learning and understand its relevance and benefit in their own workplace environment.
How do we do it?
In general, employees do not join a business expecting to be doing the same job in 10 years’ time or even 5 years’ time. From the employer’s point of view, recruitment and training are costly and time-consuming. It is far better to develop existing employees than to have to replace them when they leave for a better opportunity. Today’s young employees generally prefer to progress in their careers within an organization. Our role is to encourage and facilitate these demands while balancing them against the strategic needs of the business.
Operational excellence can be articulated across a business in several ways. From a people perspective we think in terms of the three Cs: competence, confidence, and commitment – having a workforce that is competent to undertake the work required of it, has confidence in its capabilities and knows when and where to seek additional support, and is committed to completing the work to the best of its ability and to highest standard of quality.
Ensuring a safe learning environment is part and parcel of a successful learning process. In this regard Edwards continues to invest in developing local training centers where employees can learn new skills and, importantly, practice them in a space where mistakes can be safely managed. A mistake is only a mistake if you do not or cannot learn from it.
We can teach the principles of the operational excellence model but operational excellence itself is only achieved when we live and breathe its principles in our everyday behavior.
Our product courses now focus heavily on task-based training, using field service SOPs (standard operating procedures) to implement best-practices that meet a common standard. Training is segmented into three levels of competence: Foundation, Professional and Expert.
- Foundation level training is designed to be accessible to anyone in the organization to provide them with a comprehensive and visually engaging introduction to a product or product family.
- Professional level product training requires a comprehensive understanding of product theory and operation. This classroom learning delivers the knowledge needed by a field service engineer to safely complete the hands-on, skill-based elements of a procedure to the required standard.
- Expert level personnel have achieved the highest level of competence and can correctly diagnose and repair 95% of issues they encounter.
A final word about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on our training and development program is in order. Recognized as an essential industry, semiconductor manufacturing has continued through the pandemic. As is often the case, crisis has been a catalyst for change. Pandemic related travel restrictions presented substantial challenges to our training organization, which relied on an instructor delivering theoretical training in a classroom environment that ordinarily brought together groups of people from different sites and often different countries. Still, we had to continue to train our field and onsite support teams. We responded initially with synchronous online course delivery, with students participating together in a virtual classroom. Our success with this approach prompted us to take the concept a stage further, and we created an asynchronous learning experience that enabled the student to take full control of their learning. Students are now assigned blocks of online learning to complete within a defined time frame. We schedule daily sessions to maintain regular contact, and the instructor is transformed from a classroom delivery agent to more of a learning facilitator. The new approach has been so successful that we expect to continue and expand it.
As we draw conclusions from our recent successes with accelerated learning on these new technologies, we are looking forward to exploring the finer nuances that we can leverage to develop our people and their expertise, building the competence, confidence, and commitment that are essential to their success and our customers’ satisfaction. This year promises expanding opportunities for the semiconductor industry as it continues to realize the benefits of Industrie 4.0 and begins to explore 5.0, where human creativity becomes the driving force. If we are to take advantage of these opportunities, we must never stop learning, and we must never stop learning about learning. Our model of operational excellence commits to learning and change, positioning us well to address some of the biggest behavioral changes we have seen since the first industrial revolution.
Further information
Acknowledgements – I want to thank my colleague Richard Swayne for his valuable insights and contributions to this discussion.
For further reading and blog insights, please visit the Operational Excellence section of the Innovation Hub, edwardsinnovation.com/operationalexcellence
