Complete the following:
Introduction to Human Performance Technology
Case Study 1 The PaceTronics Story
You have been hired by PaceTronics - a local company specializing in the design and manufacture of high-tech heart pacemakers for patients with heart disease such as congestive heart failure.
There have been numerous complaints from PaceTronics' customers in the last six months related to the quality of the products being shipped from PaceTronics (PT). While the design and technology of the PT pacemakers is undisputed, many units shipped are not assembled correctly or are failing prematurely due to out-of-spec parts being used in the manufacture process. If this problem continues, PT could suffer the loss of its most important customers and also risk huge liability lawsuits from patients being implanted with defective units. PT's customers want to continue buying the PT pacemakers but want assurances that the quality issues will be resolved. They have given PT a maximum of 6 months to resolve this issue or they will switch to another supplier.
PT's main competitor, the GoodHeart (GH) Corporation has been ruthlessly advertising and approaching PT's customers with messaging around their strict quality control and offering all kinds of warranties and other incentives for their products. GH's products are not as advanced as PT's though.
A few months ago, a consulting company was hired to analyze the problem and suggest a solution. Their analysis revealed that most of the quality issues were due to new personnel in the PT factories not fully understanding the different steps in assembling and testing the PT pacemaker. One of PT's most important factories is based in Bangalore, India with the remainder located in three US sites.
Most of the people working in PT's factories are young. Some are college graduates with degrees in engineering and other disciplines. Some of the India employees may have (language) problems understanding some of the highly technical manuals used in the assembly and testing of the PT1 pacemaker.
The assembly of the PT1 involves the careful soldering of intricate parts, mostly done by a soldering machine that requires close supervision. This machine needs to be "fed" with the right materials and components at the right time to ensure its uptime.
Once each PT1 is assembled, it is connected to the PT1000 tester machine. This is an extremely complex machine attached to a computer that runs the test suite and reports its findings. Based on the test findings, the operator determines if the device is ready to ship or needs to have specific components replaced to bring it within spec.
The consulting company hired by PT determined that the main problem affecting PT was a lack of knowledge by the assembly and test folks on the PT1 lines. PT has only 2 subject matter experts available to train the folks doing this work and they have been stressed to the limit by having to constantly fly to PT's 4 factories in the US and India. Their training has been mainly classroom-based standup classes taught using self-prepared PowerPoint slides. Most of the classes are taught offsite at a local hotel.
Another problem seems to be retention. While most of the folks that take the training seem to go back to their workplace and reduce their errors, after a week or so, the error rates go back up again. Senior management wants to make sure any training plan that is developed includes some way to track employee training including what classes were taken and what level of proficiency was achieved.
After an exhaustive search for the right person, PT has hired you as their new Corporate Training Manager. The company's two SMEs have been told to give you as much of their time as they can (although they're constantly flying to the factories to retrain folks on the manufacturing processes) and you've been given the budget to hire two people who will report to you. You have a fairly sizeable budget ($200K) to order whatever equipment you need.
You've just walked out of a meeting where executive management has told you that you have 3 weeks to come up with a worldwide training plan that drastically cuts (less than 1 reject in 1000) or eliminates the quality issues altogether. You have 4 worldwide factories with 500 employees in each one that will need training.
Ideas to consider:
• What technology will you use to solve this problem?
• What will you spend your budget on?
• What kinds of folks will you hire?
• How will you work with your (stressed!) SMEs?
• How will you know when your job is done?
You will need to present your strategy proposal to a Management Review Committee (MRC) who will have the ultimate approval authority for your project.
Case Study 2 The SecurOps Challenge
SecurOps (SO) is a fairly new company specializing in high-tech security systems for airports. SO's innovative products include a new hand-held "wand" (model HH1) that is not just a metal detector but also a "sniffer" for the typical chemical signature of common bomb components. The HH1 looks like a regular metal detection wand with the addition of a 3x5 inch LCD screen that conveys multiple data on the scanned person.
The other main product manufactured by SO is the CO1 carry-on luggage scanner. This device is the world's most advanced luggage X-Ray machine. The CO1 scans luggage going through a conveyor belt and by using its onboard visual database, it's able to "recognize" the usual shapes related to banned items and alert the security officer through its 15 inch LCD screen. The CO1 uses a regular PC with a custom version of Microsoft Windows ® XP and must therefore be booted up in case of a failure. If the failure in unrecoverable, the machine has a backup hard disk drive that it can boot from.
If the CO1 does not alert its operator, it does not necessarily mean that the luggage being scanned is safe. It only means that the computer did not recognize any shapes of banned objects. Therefore, operators have to be trained to carefully analyze the images that the CO1 produces on the computer screen. These images not only display the basic shape of objects inside the luggage but also show different colors based on whether an item is organic; is giving off heat or is unusually cold among other attributes.
SO is constantly upgrading the firmware and software for all its devices, adding features and fixing bugs on average, once a month. Some of these upgrades can substantially change the functionality of the equipment, sometimes adding whole new set of menus or drastically changing the behavior of the machine.
Because of the complex nature of these machines, a typical airport installation will include two technical support staff to manage breakdowns, firmware upgrades and any other issues.
SO is also working on a new machine not for available for sale yet. The WB1 is a "Whole Body" scanner that essentially replaces the need for a hand-held "wand" such as the HH1. The passenger in question simply steps into a telephone booth sized enclosure and the machine does a complete scan without any physical contact of any kind. The operator stands outside the device and interprets the data the WB1 displays on its onboard computer screen. The WB1 is currently in "beta" testing at several airports and seems to be working well with few to no crashes or malfunctions.
The Williams Gateway Airport in Chandler, Arizona - as part of its modernization initiative - has decided to install a complete suite of SO products in its main passenger terminal. The airport has two main terminals and will therefore require two sets of security equipment. The airport authorities have also agreed to become a beta test site for the WB1 scanner. If this pilot testing goes well, this could be a great contract for SO.
The operators of this equipment will be Transport Safety Administration (TSA) employees as mandated by law. Most of these folks have completed high school but many do not have a college education. Most of them have never operated machinery as complex as the SO units.
TSA will require that every employee that operates these devices be officially certified by SO as an operator of each device. Any mistake here could be catastrophic, so certified competence is extremely important for SO as well as for the TSA.
There are a total 30 TSA employees that will need to be cross-trained on all of the devices. Not all the TSA employees have been hired yet but the TSA assures you that in one more month, they will all be available to begin their training. In other words, here will be one month to fully prepare and certify all the TSA personnel to operate the machines.
After an exhaustive search for the right person and many interviews, SO has decided to hire you as their new corporate training manager. Your task is urgent. The new Williams Gateway Airport terminals will officially open to the public in two months. On that day, there will be an official ribbon-cutting ceremony hosted by the mayor of Chandler and other dignitaries and the airport authority is expecting fully certified TSA employees ready to start work the following day.
Your budget is fairly large ($200K) and you have a staff of four instructional designers at your disposal, reporting to you.
Ideas to consider:
• What technology will you use to get this project off the ground?
• What will you spend your budget on?
• What strategy will you use to roll out the training in such a short time period?
• What does your project timeline look like?
• How will you check for operator competency?
• How will you set up the certification process?
You will need to present your strategy proposal to a Management Review Committee (MRC) who will have the ultimate approval authority for your project.
Case Study 3 - The USI Dilemma
United Semiconductor International (USI) is one of the fastest growing semiconductor manufacturing companies in the world thanks to revolutionary technology invented by their engineers that dramatically increases power and saves battery life in mobile phones and other devices using audio. A USI powered phone or PDA can go for almost twice as long as any competitor's device on a single battery charge. This technology advantage has created much demand for USI's audio and communications chips.
USI chip design and manufacturing is mainly carried out in Poland and Israel but with the huge demand for these chips, it will be necessary to begin adding manufacturing lines to USI's factories in Mumbai, India; Cavite, Philippines and Trenton, NJ.
The Poland and Israel factories are superbly run operations but they are unable to supply the total number of chips required to fulfill incoming sales orders. Both of these factories are fiercely proud of their almost perfect record of safety and lack of manufacturing defects. However, when their senior management was approached on sharing this knowledge, both factory GMs were very reticent to share their knowledge and methods. Examples of excuses given were:
- "This will take critical resources away from the manufacturing floor, where we need them"
- "Our methods and processes are particular to our country/culture. It would be very difficult to copy what we do"
- "Our training materials and specifications are not written in English - therefore, everything would have to get translated. This would take an impossibly long amount of time"
USI's senior management does not believe these excuses hold any water and wants to begin implementing a training and knowledge management strategy in order to bring the three new factories online as soon as possible.
The three new factories must come online within two months and each has 200 employees working in three shifts that will need to be trained on the new process and new machines employed.
One problem is that the two working factories use different procedures and systems for their manufacturing although their equipment is identical. Which factory's system and procedures would you use to create you training program? The folks in the corporate office have been talking for years about starting up a "copy exactly" program that would completely standardize the processes and procedures at all of the company's factories. Perhaps this is a good time to start such a program?
After an exhaustive search, you have been hired as the new USI Corporate Factory Training Manager. Your task will be to provide all the appropriate training for the three new factories that will be coming online in the next few months. You have a team of three instructional designers at your disposal as well a 10 somewhat reluctant SMEs (5 from each factory) assigned to help you with the design of the training material.
Management has also asked you to consider working with them on the implementation of a Copy Exactly program for all of the factories. A program such as this one would take precedence over the training program as it would be a prerequisite before any standardized training material would be produced. Management wants to carry out this program but will leave up to you as to when to implement it - either before the new training is rolled out or after the training. If the decision is made to implement the Copy Exactly program prior to the new factory training, you will get an additional two months for this.
Most of the work that these factory folks do is mainly to load an unload wafer "boats" into the different processing machines. These machines communicate to their user via a 15 inch LCD panel that provides status information and also indicate when they need to be reloaded with a new set of wafers. It is critically important to follow the right order in processing each wafer boat as a misstep could cost over $100K per wafer (each wafer contains hundreds of microprocessor chips or "dies"). Once the machine is done processing the wafers, it releases them back into the boat and the operator then hands it off to the automated material handling system where it goes to the next station.
It should also be noted that safety is of the utmost importance because these machines are fed with highly volatile and poisonous chemicals through an internal system. But if any mishap should occur, the operator needs to know how to immediately shut down before any catastrophic accident happens.
Ideas to consider:
• What technology will you use to get this project off the ground?
• What will you spend your budget on?
• How will you get the folks at the different geographies to cooperate?
• What strategy will you use to roll out the training in such a short time period?
• Will you opt for the implementation of the Copy Exactly strategy first? Why?
• What does your project timeline look like?
• How will you check for operator competency?
You will need to present your strategy proposal to a Management Review Committee (MRC) who will have the ultimate approval authority for your project.