Case Study 4 - Case Study Commissioning of New Equipment: Personal Care Products Manufacturer

The Situation:
Our client had recently installed a new production line that utilized a new technology. Several problems arose during commissioning, and while these were eventually resolved, they did place a great deal of pressure on both our client and the equipment vendor. Operator training had been provided by the vendor, however, this training did not equip the operators to perform to the level required and as a result our client was experiencing poor line performance - low line speeds, excessive changeover times, excessive stoppages and excessive downtime.

The relationship between the vendor and the client was strained. The client was understandably upset at the performance of the new line and believed the training provided by the vendor was inadequate. The vendor was concerned that their relationship with the client was being damaged; they had already provided additional training beyond that specified in their contract and short of putting in their own personnel to run the line, they were facing irreparable damage to their relationship with this client.

The Goals:

		To improve line performance by improving the transfer of knowledge from the vendor's subject matter experts to our client's operators.
		To implement a system for training that captures and transfers not only the vendor's knowledge, but ongoing learning as our client's operators develop a deeper understanding of the line based of their experiences in running it.
		To provide a fair means of skills assessment and a system for reinforcing or maintaining the learning over time.
		To develop a system that would work equally well for the initial operators as well as those that would be hired in the future.

Talsico's Actions:
Using GoalOriented Learning™ as our platform, our Learning Strategists worked with the equipment vendor to capture their subject matter expertise and transfer this knowledge to the client's operators. Both the vendor's engineers and our client's operators were briefed on the use of GoalOriented Learning and used it to structure their knowledge transfer to the client's personnel. GoalOriented Learning™ provided a much more efficient and effective structure for transferring knowledge. GoalOriented Learning's learning verification facility was then used to enable operators to identify any gaps or misunderstandings in their knowledge and remedy these prior to final assessment.