- 10 Common Misconceptions About Lean Manufacturing
- Ten Reasons Why One Piece Flow Will Not Work
- The Best Visual Control in the World
- Give Me 60 Minutes and I'll Give You a Lean Transformation
- Toyota Owes Grandpa Ford
- Look Up from Your Work and Ask: ;Could We Flow This?
- Ouch! Change Hurts
- E-mail 5S
- The Top 5 Reasons for Using Production Preparation Process (3P)
- You've Gotta Go to Gemba More Often Than That!
- 5S Your Desk: And Other Tips for Office Productivity
- Skill Matrix Enables Suggestion System
- Work Content for Line Leads
- Strong Supervision: The Key to Long-term Kaizen
- The Four Elements for Sustaining Kaizen
- Keys to Sustaining 5S
- Top 10 Improvement Tools Named After Lean Sensei
- Intuition, Information and the Toyota Production System
- Nine Rules for Fighting Endless Meetings
Skill Matrix Enables Suggestion SystemWe received a call from a kaizen facilitator who was concerned that their suggestion system was losing steam. We went to their Gemba to find out what was going wrong. This company was receiving plenty of suggestions. They had copies of Norman Bodek's Quick & Easy Kaizen workbooks and kept the ideas simple and small. They are a high volume food processing operation. Many of the suggestions were related to small modifications to the processing lines and equipment to make them safer, easier to operate, cleaner, for pokayoke (mistake proofing) or to enable quick changeover. This made it difficult for the operators to actually implement the ideas themselves, an important aspect of a healthy and sustained suggestion system. In the case of this company, there were too many things the maintenance team needed to do between kaizen newspaper action items from kaizen events and all of the workers' good suggestions. This resulted in a perception by the workers that the management was not supporting the suggestion system. This was not the case, but management also needed to keep costs down and could not justify hiring additional skilled maintenance workers. We introduced them to the skill matrix, a simple and visual tool to show who has training and experience in what skill. Here is an example of a skill matrix that is used in our office, and here is a skill matrix template. This led to further discussion with their management of the need for a full TPM program including Autonomous Maintenance and developing the maintenance skills and mindset of the operators. They have a focus on OEE as a metric but had not yet made the link with a cross-functional Total Productive Maintenance effort. Once again, investing in people was the key to a sustaining Lean manufacturing results and developing a kaizen culture. Added July 26, 2007: Download free skill matrix template here. By Jon Miller - November 10, 2005 9:35 PM 
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Comments
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Can someone please tell me where I can find a sample of a Skill Matrix? Thanks in advance for your help, Angela Avent Organizational Development & Training Plymouth Tube Company - Eupora, Ms Hi Angela, I will send you a skill matrix template. I have also added a link to a skill matrix template, right above the photo. Best wishes, Jon how do you fill in the circles for the amount of experience they have like to have a skill matrix template There is a link to a skill matrix template right above the image in this article. Do you have any guidelines for organizing/ categorizing the skills? Ours skills matrix keeps growing each day since we want it to measure technical, team, leadership, problem solving, business knowledge, computers, etc. Also, once it's time to measure, how do you keep it objective? Hi Ivonne, In general, the skills should be as specific as possible and linked to an actual process or job. This also helps make it measurable and objective. It sounds like you have one huge skill matrix. I would recommend several small ones by job, process or work area. A skill matrix is a matrix of a set of skills and a group of people, so you can expect the same people to be on several different matrices if they work in more than one area. Technical skills required for the job can be demonstrated so this is easy. Team work can also be broken down to observable skills, and the same with problem solving. Business knowledge is not a skill, it is a set of things you know. Making good decisions based on knowledge, experience, and situation is a skill. That's called management and I'm not sure it can be taught, but you can certainly test for knowledge. Job knowledge is a prerequisite to job skill, and the first quadrant of the skill matrix (top right position) is usually the knowledge of the process (familiarity with tools, materials, equipment, quality standards, etc.) So I would think of knowledge that way. For computer skills as well, these should be tied to job skill. If someone is managing contracts they need to learn word processing programs, etc. If someone needs to print and scan work orders, they need certain computer skills. The best way to use the skill matrix is to show people how specific skills are tied to the work they do, and how having more people cross-trained helps everyone. The leadership skill matrix I would also tie to a job, such as team leader, supervisor, CEO. The same type of skills are needed to be a leader, though a CEO may require more knowledge, education, experience, etc. There should be an objective, documented standard that people are measured against. Tasks should be performed within a certain time to a certain level of quality. Instead of trying to capture all possible skills for the people on your team, have several skill matrices by process or job. The more you can tie these skills to specific jobs or work that happens and can be observed, the more practical you can make it. Is there knowledge of a company using skill matrices to determine a pay scale based on an employee's skills? That's a good question. Not too long ago there was a posting in the LEI forum on a similar topic. If you can find that, the person who posted may be able to share some information with you. One of our local clients is also developing something like what you describe but they are in the early stages. One point is that rather than using the skill matrix to determine a pay scale, you need to determine a pay scale based on several other factors and then use the skill matrix as a ways to measure the job skills development portion of salary evaluation. Jan Dennis Searching for a Skills Matrix and was lucky enough to find your web site. Thank you, your sample is exactly what was needed at the University of Phoenix. the matrix is good,we can make one for our company & depts Hi Sunita. You can make a skill matrix for your company and departments, but unless your company is very small it is best to start with small, local teams. This might be a section or a team, rather than a department. It will be easier to manage a matrix with a smaller group of people and smaller list of skills. You can then expand it step by step to the whole organization. How to make skill matrix for IT Employees? Hi, hi, I like also to have a skill matrix template... Hi. Here is a link to a free skill matrix template. The book Toyota Talent: Developing People the Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker and David Meier has some good information and examples on how to use the skill matrix, as well as supporting tools such as Job Instruction, job breakdown sheets, and standard work documents. Jon, In the skills matrix definitions, you use "can team others to perform." How do you define this? Any other skills matrices people have used successfully? You are the first person to catch the error Brion. It should be "train" and not "team" in "can team others to perform". Here is a skill matrix template you may find useful. This matrix shows the flexibility in visual way only, in my opinion it will be more useful, manageable and possible to compare to see both - boxes and the level of knowledge in percentage I still haven't figured out how to fill in sections of the little pies in the skills matrix that indicate a persons level of knowledge. Can someone help me with this issue? Hi Trinda. You can find more information on how to use the Skill Matrix if you search in the "search" field on the top right of the page, above the advertising images. Hi, Has any body have skill matrix template for fabric sewing....(sewing garments) Hello, What do you think? Thanks Hi, Thanks for making this template downloadable, has helped me with a college project. Kind Regards For those still confused about filling in the pie pieces, just post up the matrix and use a marker. If you have to use an electronic copy, just delete the old pie, and copy and paste the new one in its place. At least that's what we do here. If I'm wrong, forgive me, I'm trying to learn and accept lean after being beaten to death by EOQ from the #1 isye school Georgia Tech. |
