Skills cannot be easily bought
Often the pace of growth of any company or manufacturing facility is limited by the ability to staff people. Not just any people, but skilled people. Unfortunately, skilled people cannot be cloned. It takes time for a person to develop and build the experience and expertise that is so valuable to driving the productivity increases discussed in the last section.

Manufacturing units can go out and hire people, but this usually only benefits the people being hired. While they get a higher salary, there is no guarantee that they will be able to deliver the results being sought. Each manufacturing unit is relatively unique, if not because of the machines, but because of the other people and ways of working that are followed.

What can companies do about this? Focus on people development by tasking senior manufacturing people with the responsibility of oversight, rather than leaving it to the HR department. Develop and invest in programs to accelerate learning of people who join, at all levels and not just at the shop floor.

This can be done by a combination of short-term assignments done in parallel with regular work and structured communication on processes being followed. Finally, include step function improvements by bringing in external skills and meshing them with internal teams and give them goals to drive improvements.

What are the critical areas of shortfall in skills? Most companies focus a lot of the training on manufacturing methods. However, manufacturing management and supply chain planning methods usually fall short.

The impact of poor design and planning is to drive up the need for headcount and actually makes it more difficult to improve skill levels. The converse is also true. By increasing skill levels in management and planning it is possible to drive up productivity and reduce the number of people needed. This makes it easier to get a better profile of people and to continue to train them better.

(Continued on the next page)