How to Make Leadership Experts
The Scope of Manufacturing: Manufacturing is all about using labor and equipment to convert raw materials into finished goods. Its sounds simple enough, however the labor, asset and material costs are enormous and the expectations in our factories is that high quality products are produced safely, on-time and to at budgeted cost targets.
Who is in the trenches leading this enormous effort? It is the Production Supervisors that run the shopfloor who carry this daily burden. Our Production Supervisors are in unique roles in that they are they are responsible for the safety of employees, the quality of products and the millions of dollars in assets, labor and material that are used in the converting processes. Most other frontline roles just don’t carry this broad scope of responsibility.
If we compare a Production Supervisor's level of responsibility to that of a Financial Portfolio Manager, someone who is responsible for millions of dollars of investment assets, we would expect that Financial Manager to be an expert in the field of finance and to be very well versed in a wide-variety of financial vehicles. Comparatively, since Production Supervisors are responsible for millions of dollars of converting costs, why wouldn’t we expect them to be experts in the field of manufacturing?
I’ve come to realize over 35 years in various manufacturing leadership roles, that individual performance comes down to three components; effort, ability and expertise. And so if a supervisor applies effort and has the leadership capability, then our goal should be to provide them opportunities to develop their expertise. And since their roles are uniquely different, shouldn't their training be specific to manufacturing leadership too? So this then begs the next question;
How can we most effectively build manufacturing frontline leadership expertise?
Designed to Develop Experts
Concepts in Manufacturing Leadership (CML) certification courses are designed specifically for Production Supervisors. Each CML session includes leadership aspects and real-life examples that are specific to manufacturing leadership. CML is an e-learning platform and that of course makes it extremely flexible. Our CML courses work around the schedules of plant Production Supervisors so there’s no need to pull factory’s leaders off of the production floor at specific times for training.
CML is a four-stage training program. CML Level-100 is a Foundational-Level course which focuses on the supervisor’s development as an individual and on their one-on-one interactions with their employees. CML Level-200 is an Intermediate-Level course which develops team leadership skills and more specifically, how to build, develop and engage manufacturing teams. Level-300 is Advanced-Level training and it covers operational leadership. Level-300 focuses on working with peers, managing processes and leading change. And lastly, Level-400 training is Expert-Level skill development and it is about managerial leadership and thus provides the leadership tools required to transform an operation to new heights of performance through a strategic approach.
CML training is so flexible that you can decide on the pace that is optimal for your plant. You see, CML client’s get to choose the training pace. Some clients pace their supervisors to complete one session per week, others bi-weekly and some monthly. CML easily adapts to whatever works best for each individual operation.
Each CML session comes with a 20-minute video, an article, session notes, a 10-question quiz, journal questions and a certification upon completion. Additionally, as a best practice, we recommend that the supervisors are involved with reoccurring round table discussions. As such, the questions found in the facilitator’s guide are perfect for facilitating focused round table discussions.
Do you want to provide your supervisors with the tools to become manufacturing experts? Visit https://www.tools4t.com
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