If people make the difference....

I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to hear an executive from one of the country's largest foundry organizations discuss some pretty aggressive sales goals for his firm over the next decade. To reach them, he said, it was obvious that adding production capacity was needed. In investigating how to do this in the most cost-effective manner, the firm considered three alternatives: build new plants, purchase existing capacity or improve the efficiency of its existing operations.

Even I could figure out that the obvious choice would be to improve your existing operations. They concluded the 'same thing.

It got me to thinking if this same sound thinking could be applied to people. I mean, productivity is just as important to long-term growth as technology and equipment. It's the application of the technology and effective use of the equipment that leads to true productivity gains, right?

Let me give you a personal example. Less than a year ago I switched over from a Macintosh computer to a PC. It has been a frustrating experience to say the least. During this time, I had about 7 hr of formal training and almost no on-the-job training, unless you consider the hours I've spent after work and on the weekends teaching myself new programs.

I will tell you right here and now that I am not nearly as productive on my PC as I was on the Mac. Whose fault is it? Mine, of course. I need more training. But I have used the same excuses for myself that I've heard from so many others when it comes to training employees. When business is good, it goes something like this: "We're so busy that we can't afford to let them out of the shop." And when times aren't quite so good, the chief alibi becomes: "It's too expensive!"

If you had to guess how many hours of training foundry employees undergo on average annually, what would you say? Go ahead, take a guess.

In 1993 and again in 1996, the AFS Marketing Div. carried out a survey aimed at determining a variety of productivity measures (man-hours/ton of metal melted, etc.). One section of the survey dealt with training and asked three questions: "On average, how many hours of classroom training did you provide hourly workers during the year?," "On average, how many hours of on-the-job training did you provide hourly workers during the year?" and "On average, how many hours of classroom training did you provide salaried workers during the year?"

The survey also provided a formula to calculate the hours: number of classroom (or on-the-job) training hours for employees (hourly or salaried) divided by the number of employees (hourly or salaried). "On-the-job" was defined as "training that is provided to an individual at their place of work that is either to assist them in learning their operation or training that does not replace the normal operator where the individual observes to learn the operation."

So did you make your guess yet?

Based on the answers provided by more than 200 foundries in the 1996 survey, hourly foundry workers received an average of 16.1 hr of classroom training per year, up from 13.1 hr in 1993. On-the-job training was just about double the classroom hr at 27.1 in 1996 and 26.4 in 1993. So in 1996, hourly workers in foundries received about 43 hr of training, or about one week's worth.

Salaried workers fared worse, though. In 1996, salaried workers received an average of 26.5 hr of training, up from 19.1 hr in 1993.

Is this good or bad? I don't know. In trying to put these numbers in perspective, I have spent several hours searching the Internet for similar information on like industries, but have yet to find any. I'll keep looking.

In the meantime, we asked a health and safety expert how many hours of OSHA training foundry workers should undergo to be up to speed in the safety area. He told us that initially, each worker should be provided with 8-12 hr of safety training and then 4-5 additional hr each year as a refresher. This would pretty much use up the total average training hours per year.

You be the judge whether or not we are investing enough in training our employees. Again, based on my own personal experience, I'm pretty sure we aren't.

A lot of the impetus for this column comes from phone calls I receive regularly and the conversations I've had during the last several months from foundries and suppliers alike. They are all looking for "good people."

So where do you get good people? As this column started out, you can buy talent away from other foundries or even other industries, or you can get more out of the people you have. But "improving the inefficiency" will require an investment in education and training.

So, if it's true that people make the difference, think about the difference an educated, well-trained person can make.