PCB007 Magazine

PCB007-Mar2024

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72 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2024 proud of a long-term employee culture. How- ever, not taking full advantage of this expertise can be a fatal mistake, especially for small busi- nesses. A typical scenario is walking through a manu- facturing facility and stopping at a work center staffed by a highly skilled operator. e man- agement escort quickly says, "Stanley, here is our department lead and one of our most expe- rienced lathe operators." When asked to see Stanley's training records, the manager states, "Stanley is our trainer, and all new employees apprentice with him before becoming certified to run a lathe." When asked again to see Stanley's training records, the manager says, "Well, uh, Stanley was grandfathered in since he has been run- ning this lathe for 30 years. He certainly doesn't need to be trained." While Stanley may not need to be trained on the operation of the lathe, there are other "com- pany-specific" aspects of training. Whether having a certificate from an outside training service or another company, technical educa- tion, or performance testing, there should be something on file to verify the operator's com- petency. Experienced people like Stanley are the greatest asset to any company's training program and should be the foundation the pro- gram is built around. Tribal Knowledge In this scenario, both the company and its employees tend to view training negatively, even insulting, like some form of remedial action. is perception couldn't be further from the truth. One of the greatest advantages of training in this situation is to capture the tribal knowledge of the highly skilled work- force. What I mean by tribal knowledge is the entirety of people like Stanley with expertise, experience, tricks of the trade, and the idio- syncrasies of the job that have been learned over the past number of years that are proba-

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