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TCIE helps workers with learning curve
On the shop floor, Eberl Iron Works employees Ray Owsian, Tom Huber and Paul Brydalski review the training manual they developed with the help of TCIE.
Tom Huber, a shop supervisor at Eberl Iron Works Inc., a metal fabrication and industrial framing company, has long known that different people learn at different rates. He knows this from more than 14 years of training people on the factory floor in Eberl’s fabrication shop. At the same time, he needs new hires to get up to speed as quickly as possible so they can become productive team members.
Eberl recently found a way to solve that dilemma with the help of UB’s Center for Industrial Effectiveness (TCIE), a program of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Huber and his colleagues knew the answer lay in a manual that would streamline the training process for all production staff, from material handlers to machine operators.
“We just really needed some outside help to get the ball rolling,” said Nora Eberl, Eberl’s controller.
New employees at Eberl typically work alongside an operator before being allowed to interact with the machine. That kind of training could take up to a year and a half. While the managers are technologically savvy, Huber said, they often found it difficult to convey how to perform a process that had become second nature to them.
To start work on a new training manual, TCIE consultant Kristina Young began working with Huber and two other supervisors on training basics, such as performance appraisals and administering discipline.
Then the writing of the manual began, which was organized according to specific tasks and equipment.
With the new manual, the company will have certified trainers responsible for teaching new employees.
“When someone comes in and doesn’t really have that background, you’re giving them all these bullet points before they walk out onto the floor,” Huber said.
Two recently hired employees went through the new process. “It seems like they are learning a lot quicker, and they are also being cross-trained,” Eberl said.
In fact, a new emphasis on cross-training is an additional benefit from the manual-writing project. There is a new commitment in the company to train all employees in multiple jobs so absences due to vacations or illness pose less of a problem on the factory floor while employees gain a broader understanding of the overall workflow.
TCIE not only provides services specific to a company’s business process needs, such as those at Eberl, but offers soft business-skills training in introduction to supervision, change management, time management, communication skills, conflict management skills, coaching skills objectives, motivation objectives and performance management.
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