Why are new-age manufacturers raving about skills tracking software? Because you need more than standardized procedures, advanced equipment, and sophisticated product systems. The right skills must be available on the right shift for maximum operational performance.
Let’s say an important machine breaks down during a night shift. You need an operator to run an alternate process as well as a maintenance professional to fix the machine. If you cannot promptly figure out who is certified, trained, or still developing competency, it’s a problem. You have to depend on phone calls, spreadsheets, or memory. This implies undue escalation and production time loss.
However, with skills tracking software, you can view qualifications, skills, and competencies across plants, lines, shifts, and teams in real time. Skills data becomes more current, accessible, and linked to frontline actions.
If you are pursuing operational excellence, this presents a significant opportunity. With a digital approach, you can spot skill gaps, comprehend workforce capability, plan training, and connect worker competency with manufacturing needs.
What Is Skills Tracking Software? Definition and Benefits
It’s a digital system that’s useful for recording, monitoring, managing, and analyzing employee:
- Skills
- Certifications
- Qualifications
- Training progress
- Level of competency
As a manufacturer, you can use the software to answer questions like:
- Which employees have the necessary qualification to carry out a certain task?
- Who has the authority to operate a specific machine?
- Which certifications are about to expire?
- Where are gaps in capability emerging?
- Which workers require extra training?
- Is skill coverage adequate for each shift?
Sure, a conventional spreadsheet can answer some of these queries. However, maintaining an accurate spreadsheet across a large workforce is tricky.
Digital platforms for skills management provide a more current view of it all. You get to know if your company has the relevant capabilities to run operations in an effective, consistent, and safe manner, even as requirements change.
Key Benefits
A digital skills matrix has multiple perks:
Improved Workforce Visibility: You can visualize capability across different facilities, departments, and shifts.
Rapid Gap Identification: Before they trigger operational hiccups, missing competencies become apparent.
Better Training: You can make training more targeted, in line with real production and business needs.
Enhanced Workforce Flexibility: With cross-training, you can make more employees capable of carrying out crucial tasks.
Stronger Compliance Documentation: You can maintain qualification and training records in a centralized environment.
Improved Workforce Planning: You can compare existing capabilities against production requirements in the future.
What Manufacturing Skills Should You Track?
Your processes, products, regulatory obligations and equipment will determine the skills that need tracking. Consider focusing on those that are closely connected to productive, consistent, and safe work, like:
Machine and Equipment
Track if workers are trained and competent enough to work with specific machines. These might include presses, CNC machines, welding equipment, packaging machinery, or automated production cells. For complicated equipment, you might have to break down competency into setup, operation, troubleshooting, and maintenance.
Process
For individual processes, workers might require specific skills. Such processes might include mixing, machining, assembly, changeovers, inspection, calibration, etc. When you connect such capabilities to standard work, training improves and preps employees for actual tasks.
Quality
This has to be a part of the competency matrix if your employees are involved in testing, inspection, or other quality-critical processes. Relevant capabilities usually encompass:
- Quality procedures
- Measurement equipment
- Inspection techniques
- Sampling procedures
- Defect spotting
- Nonconformance tackling
This way, you can forge a link between workforce capability and quality management.
Maintenance
If you practice total productive maintenance, this competency is vital. So, consider tracking capabilities like electrical troubleshooting, preventive maintenance, mechanical repair, and equipment diagnostics. Focus on basic operator maintenance and lubrication as well. This can improve response when something breaks down.
Safety and Compliance
Tracking relevant safety certifications and qualifications also matters. Depending on the operation, this might involve safety procedures, machine-specific authorization, emergency response, and other legally necessary competencies.
Leadership and Problem-Solving
A mature skills matrix isn’t restricted to technical tasks. You can also keep a tab on capabilities like:
- Lean problem-solving
- Root-cause analysis
- Coaching
- Process auditing
- Continuous improvement
How to Build a Manufacturing Skills Matrix
To develop a skills matrix manufacturing, start by mapping your business requirements vis-à-vis what your workforce has at present. You will be placing workers on one axis and tasks, machines, competencies, or skills on the other. Every intersection signals someone’s existing proficiency.
What else?
Define Key Tasks and Roles
Start with the work that’s most important. Identify processes, tasks, machines, responsibilities, and inspections that call for specialized competency. Avoid tracking every skill you can think of.
Define Competency Levels
A competency matrix needs to establish proficiency levels that are clear. Examples include in training, untrained, supervised, competent, advanced, and trainer. Though exact terminology might be different, definitions should be such that two supervisors can arrive at the same conclusion while assessing a worker.
Establish Necessary Skills
Whether it’s a process, line, or role, identify skills that are essential for independent work. This will give you a baseline for evaluating current capabilities.
Assess Existing Capability
Evaluate workers against skill requirements with the aid of proper evidence. Based on the skill, evidence might include completion of training, assessment, practical demonstration, certification, or sign-off by supervisor. Why’s this important? That’s because attending a training session doesn’t necessarily make an employee capable of conducting a task independently.
Spot the Skills Gap
Once you map current capability against what’s needed, it’s time to identify skills gap. For instance, a production line might have three qualified changeover technicians currently but require six. This operational gap is actionable and shouldn’t be treated as a HR statistic only.
Craft a Training Plan
The matrix should translate to action directly. Based on major gaps, you can prioritize refresher training, cross-training, certification, mentoring, or supervised practice.
Keep the Matrix Updated
If a skills matrix becomes obsolete, it loses value. So, make sure role changes, new hires, process changes, expired certifications, and completed training get updated. With digital systems, maintaining live visibility constantly can be especially smooth.
How to Choose a Skills Tracking Software for Your Factories
Generic talent management systems might not address the specific requirements of a factory environment effectively. So, look for:
Shop-Floor Usability
Supervisors and frontline workers should find the software simple enough to use. It shouldn’t require much administrative effort. Also remember that if it takes too long to update skills, data quality will take a hit ultimately.
Skills Visibility in Real Time
You should be able to view capability by site, line, machine, department, shift, and employee. In case you run multiple facilities, look for software that provides enterprise-level visibility.
Qualification and Expiration Tracking
Identifying certifications and qualifications that are about to expire should be hassle-free with the system. This way, when you need an employee for a critical task, you won’t have to worry about a capability issue.
Training Management
Look for capabilities that use training plans to connect gaps. Ideally, the workflow should be like: detect gap, assign training, validate competency, and update matrix.
Integration
Where appropriate, skills information must connect with manufacturing systems like:
- HR platforms
- Manufacturing execution system (MES)
- Learning management systems
- Maintenance systems
- Production planning
The idea is to integrate workforce capability into operational decision-making.
Analytics
You should be able to spot various trends with the software too. These might be associated with training completion, lingering skill gaps, shift coverage, competency development, or single failure points. The insights can help enhance workforce planning.
Multi-Site Standardization
When running several plants, look for software that supports common standards of competency while letting sites maintain lawful local requirements. This way, you can standardize workforce development but not every plant has to follow the same operating model.
How to Implement Skills Tracking Software
Remember to focus on the operating model (not the software) when implementing skills tracking technology:
Conduct a Pilot
Zero in on a single factory, department, or production area. Pick a process where visualizing skills impacts operations evidently. Before expanding, this will help you test competency definitions and workflow.
Work With Operations to Build the Matrix
The HR or training team shouldn’t be in exclusive charge of designing the matrix. After all, experienced operators, quality and maintenance professionals, and production supervisors better understand each task’s practical requirements. So, when they are involved, the system’s accuracy and credibility improve.
Establish Clear Ownership
Make sure someone is responsible for keeping every competency area updated. Digital skills systems, in the absence of ownership, might suffer from data quality problems.
Link Skills to Everyday Operations
During the production reviews held daily, supervisors can ask if staffing and competency are suited to a particular day’s production needs. For instance, if a qualified operator is away on leave, the supervisor can promptly decide if another trained worker can do the needful.
Employ Visual Management
Gaps are easier to detect when capability is clearly and visually represented. In fact, with digital visual management, you can see where training is ongoing, coverage is robust, and critical gaps need attention. This way, skills capability becomes a vital aspect of daily management.
Connect Skills to Improvement
Training needs to correspond with operational requirements. If a certain process churns out defects repeatedly, you can investigate if standard work, process design, equipment, or competency is the issue. Hence, this links skills development and operational excellence closely.
Review and Improve
As technologies, processes, products, and machines evolve, skills requirements change. So, review if the matrix still embodies the capabilities your operation needs. Think of the skills system as a sentient operational tool and not a one-off implementation.
Turn Skills Tracking Into Shop Floor Performance
Workforce capability is intimately intertwined with operational performance. Machines only produce consistently when the people involved know what to do. And a skills matrix makes this capability visible. But you truly thrive by connecting skills tracking software with daily production management.
Digital solutions take it up a notch by replacing stagnant spreadsheets with centralized records, live skills information, visual management, and gap analysis. With Fabriq, you can connect workforce capability with performance and improvement management systems, in addition to factory goals. You can build an environment where skills visibility drives decision-making, workforce planning, risk detection, and constant improvement.
See how Fabriq helps in tracking and developing shop floor skills.
