Maintenance Training Need Assessment

Ensuring that training fulfils company’s requirements is critical to success. That training is needed is usually self-evident. But what kind of training, in which areas, and how much training are questions not easily answered. That’s what ‘needs assessments’ are about.

Making a Start

The first step in a ‘needs assessment’ is to identify the problem and then determine if training will provide the answer. Many companies expect training to be the “silver bullet.” But in most cases, it is only part solution to the problem, which is lack of an organised and disciplined maintenance process. As management looks at all of these aspects of their maintenance organisation, they need to find the answers to some basic questions:

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§? Will training resolve my problem?

§? How much money will I save by implementing this training program?

§? How much will the training cost?

§? Is there a payback on this training?

Some hints at the answers to these questions can be found in a study funded by the Department of Education with the Bureau of Census, US to determine how training impacts productivity. Some of the eye-opening results were:

§? Increasing an individual’s educational level by 10% increases productivity by 8.6%

§? Increasing an individual’s work hours by 10% increases productivity by 6.0%

§? Increasing capital stock by 10% increases productivity by 3.2%

Training alone is not sufficient. The development & implementation of a maintenance skills training program must be part of a well-developed strategy. Skill increases that are not utilised properly will result in no changes. Once an individual is trained in a skill, he must be provided with the time and tools to perform this skill and must be held accountable for his actions.

Will training solve my problem?

Research says that 70% of equipment failures are self-induced i.e. equipment failures caused by the introduction of human error. Not all self-induced equipment failures are maintenance related. Some will be induced by operator error. Others originate by being bumped by vehicles or other equipment, etc.

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Work orders are the best source of information to determine self-induced equipment failures. We must identify the true cause of the failures through random sampling the work orders of equipment breakdowns over a three-month period. The question to be answered: Was lack of skill the problem (self-induced failures)?

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If lack of skill was the major problem, then you can easily estimate the losses due to lack of skills. First, add together the cost of production losses, the cost of maintenance labour, and the cost of repair parts. Then multiply this sum by the percentage of maintenance labour hours attributable to emergency (self-induced) breakdown work orders. The final figure will be a rough indication of what your plant skills deficit is costing you.

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