The Federal Reserve reported that manufacturing output increased by 0.7% during the month of January. However, with an increase of 1.5% December of last year has remained the best month in terms of growth since December 2006. As a result manufacturers have been hiring on a more consistent basis compared to other industries. Industrial production output, including utilities and mines, remained unchanged in January. Utility output actually saw a decline during last...
Today many corporations are either developing for themselves and/or looking for support from a vendor in order to address their specific training needs. If you choose the latter route, you need to choose a vendor that will listen, be able to understand what you want to achieve, and then work with your organization in order to design and/or implement a training program that will meet your objectives. The key to any successful...
The industrial manufacturing industry employs nearly 13.8 million people. With such an immense workforce, an untrained employee can cost a plant millions of dollars whether it is through accidents or inefficiency. Providing an industrial workforce with the proper industrial training is not only an expense but also an investment of resources such as time and money that can potentially either make or break a plants success. During a recent inspection of a...
For most of the training requirements within your organization, effectively designed and produced generic courseware will meet your needs. However, you will occasionally require specialized custom programming designed to address items that are specific to your organization’s procedures, policies or specific equipment. What should you look for? To begin, you should select a producing organization that has a long track record of creating similar multiple-media training programs for their customers. And, they...
In December U.S. factory orders rose in response to the increased number of investments in capital goods like heavy machinery. The Commerce Department reported that orders rose approximately 1.1 percent in December, down slightly from the 2.2 percent gain in November. 2011 as a whole saw orders go up by 12.1 percent following 2010’s 12.9 percent gain. But in 2009, when the recession is said to have officially ended, factory orders plunged...
What do you want to accomplish with your training initiatives? If you are charged with the industrial skills training initiatives, do your objectives include minimizing downtime, reducing scrap, cross training your workforce? Or, are those objectives really tied to a “CYA” strategy? In other words, are you going to justify your training initiatives by showing management the improvement results that you can demonstrate by comparing pre-test and final exam scores? If, after...
Thirty-five years ago today — February 7, 1977 — ITC began business as a corporation. William J. Schmidt, Gerald H. Kaiz and I were the founders. However, this blog is not about the people who were associated with ITC, it is about some of the “outside” individuals who made this all possible. Leading that list, of course, are the customers — more than 6000 organizations worldwide. And, it’s not just those numbers...
For organizations in the process and manufacturing industries, applied technical competence is the basis for increasing productivity and quality while minimizing downtime and re-work. The IOP (Institute of Physics) describes competence as: “’the ability to perform activities to the standards required in employment, using an appropriate mix of knowledge, skills and attitude.’ All three aspects must be present if someone is to be effective in the workplace. To improve competence you need...
Industrial training is the heart of every manufacturing business. From safety training to maintenance training to basic boiler and air compressor training, industrial training skills serve as one of the most important building blocks to a successful plant. Just ask durable goods manufacturers around the U.S. who saw a strong 3% increase in December. On January 26th, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that during the final month of 2011 manufactured durable goods...
Multi-sensory media instruction is rapidly invading the world of learning – and, with positive results. Today, we see excellent examples in games/simulations as well as with the more traditional platforms of CD-ROM and certain E-Learning programs. Much data relating to multi-sensory media instruction is available, and this data can illustrate the reasons behind the success of multi-sensory learning. More than anything else, the body of multi-sensory training developed for business and industry...
From time to time it is a good idea to examine the other companies competing with your organization in the same market segment. By carefully making an unbiased assessment of your competitors you can learn a lot. What force separates the winners from the losers in your market space? The same force that has shaped survivors throughout history — their response to change! Since the beginning of time, it has been those...
With last week’s announcement by Apple, I can safely predict that education has taken a giant step forward in the deliverance of better learning to many more students: NEW YORK—January 19, 2012—Apple® today announced iBooks® 2 for iPad®, featuring iBooks textbooks, an entirely new kind of textbook that’s dynamic, engaging and truly interactive. iBooks textbooks offer iPad users gorgeous, fullscreen textbooks with interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos, unrivaled navigation and much more....
In order to stay competitive, today’s organization has to realize maximum productivity from each and every employee. While investing training dollars exclusively in specific task skills training (i.e., “Centrifugal Pump Maintenance”), too often, the company ignores the basic skills knowledge gap that exists throughout their organization. Unfortunately, when they take the time to examine that basic skills gap, many find that their employees simply don’t have the necessary basic skills knowledge to...
Media instruction has always been a designers’ medium. That was true with videotape, interactive laser videodisc, DVDs and CD-ROMs. And, so it is today with online learning. In fact, the only applicable phrase for effective E-Learning instruction — “instructional integrity” — does not belong to the new Merlins with their magic technology. That phrase is the province of flesh and blood human beings — the instructional designers of yesterday, today, and tomorrow....
