An essential backbone of mid sized manufacturing companies is production staff who have a confident command of the applications and the relevant experience. These employees are decisive for the company's capacity to innovate and compete. To keep pace with the many changes and transformation processes in the competitive environment and to make full use of the company's innovative strength, it is important to encourage and continuously develop the competences of production staff. Strategic competence management is a focused way of doing that.
New challenges, new competence requirements
Major upheavals are taking place in the working world. Many jobs in production are becoming increasingly technological and shaped by AI. New production methods and technologies are being added and organisational structures are changing. As a result, more technical skills are demanded of employees today than in the past. Manufacturing needs even more highly qualified staff. Robotics, digitalisation, AI: processes in industry are becoming more complex, people, machines and processes are increasingly networked digitally, and different competences are needed now and in future to produce with these systems and to guarantee stable processes. Alongside a growing number of regular mandatory training courses on processes, occupational safety or new guidelines such as data protection, new knowledge in handling digital tools, software and data analysis is important. The success of the company also depends on how employees' competences develop alongside the new challenges.
Through further training and qualification, employees can be developed in a targeted way from one role into another to meet the new competence requirements, adapting to changes in the working world through reskilling and upskilling. But which new competences are actually needed in which roles, today and in future, in your own company? Professional competence management identifies employees' strengths and develops them purposefully. Strategic competence management in production is about developing people's competences so that they are able to apply their skills and knowledge appropriately to the situation in their tasks and to solve problems.
Reskilling and upskilling of industrial staff
Certain industries, such as mechanical engineering or the automotive sector, are particularly affected by the transformation. To secure competitiveness for the long term, the first step is to define which competence requirements and needs the company has, today and in future. The next step is to examine which competences the workforce has, where there are gaps and where gaps may open up. The competence profiles follow from employees' current tasks and from the predicted changes in their areas of activity and responsibility. If a car manufacturer switches its production from combustion vehicles to electric cars, for instance, new competence profiles are required among production staff, such as knowledge of battery systems, electric drives and control electronics, or an understanding of the various types of battery, their charging and discharging behaviour, safety aspects and maintenance requirements. In this example those are just a few of the many competence requirements that have to be taken into account in competence management.
Challenges in competence management
In production, training people and implementing competence management is a very particular challenge, because the necessary infrastructure is often missing. Production staff frequently have no devices or email addresses, and digital competences have to be built up first. Standalone PCs or shared tablets can be used here to set up a good infrastructure for competence management.
Another point that should be considered: people are, as we know, creatures of habit. As in other sectors, planned changes in production, for instance to workflows, often meet resistance among employees. Company leadership plays a central role in fostering adaptability, acceptance and proactivity among staff and in implementing competence management successfully. The leadership style and the corporate culture set the course for a positive attitude towards change. To avoid overload, it is essential that tasks are tailored to the employee's competences and strengths and to the new working roles. Job sharing can also be a sensible solution in one area or another. The right tools for implementing competence management are likewise very important in order to convey learning content that fits individually and motivates, and to reach the defined goals consistently.
What are the competence profiles of the future?
Competence management should be guided on the one hand by the needs of the workforce and on the other by the company goals. Competence management in production is about identifying, documenting and managing the skills, qualifications and experience of employees in industrial occupations and in production.
- Identify skills: many mid sized manufacturing companies have no transparency about which competences they currently have on board. A stocktaking analysis is prepared for this. Interviews, tests or observation give a good overview of employees' skills and personal experience.
- Create competence profiles: the results of the stocktaking and all relevant information such as certificates, training and skills are bundled into individual competence profiles and documented in digital databases.
- Needs analysis: what need for skills and qualifications does the company have today and in future? Where are the gaps, and in which areas should targeted training and development be offered?
- Workforce planning: the competence profiles make it transparent which employees are suited to which projects and tasks, and their deployment and development can be planned accordingly.
- Development paths: professional competence management allows careers to be planned transparently and competences to be developed in a targeted way. Development paths show employees how they can grow within the company, which additional skills they need for which individual goals, and which skills could be deepened further.
Professional competence management is an important instrument for companies in industrial and production oriented sectors, helping them to motivate their people to keep learning, to manage working resources effectively and to develop them purposefully. THE MAK'ED TEAM has many years of experience in developing competence management systems tailored individually to our clients' requirements. We develop solutions for mid sized manufacturing companies so that competences in production are built up effectively and with focus. Whether missing infrastructure or shift work: in manufacturing there are many factors that have to be taken into account, and the implementation looks different for every company. Knowledge and skills are conveyed in analogue or digital form, in training courses, instruction and workshops. Effective competence management helps to raise the performance and competitiveness of the company, retain employees and minimise risks. To achieve that, we accompany every company with individual solutions tailored precisely to its particular requirements in competence management.
You can find more about competence management and checklists and case studies on the topic here.
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