Knowledge - Updates Required to be Done by Supervisors

A to Z - Activities, Competencies, Education and Training of Engineering Supervisors - Article Series

 

Supervisors are knowledge workers. They need to keep updating their engineering knowledge as well as managerial knowledge.

Currently, production shops are becoming smart. Sensors and actuators are being provided in machines and they are to be controlled through instructions from computer systems. The supervisors have to learn the new knowledge related to smart machines to supervise the shops in the coming days. They have to learn the digital skills to access the information as well as to communicate through digital media.

Knowledge required to improve processes in quality and productivity dimensions.

The foreman's role is  three-fold in process improvement for productivity: 

(1) to be an alert observer, with eyes newly opened to waste; 

(2) to be a cooperative assistant to full- time methods men, after being indoctrinated with the elementary principles of the industrial engineer's techniques of charting and analysis; and 

(3) to develop improved methods of his own. 

The Questioning Attitude. The method of attack is to instill in every supervisor a continuing, hard-headed, insatiably questioning attitude, which examines everything at every possible opportunity. Its fundamental requirement is an open mind  that absorbs new knowledge and methods and that approaches an improvement problem without bias towards status-quo. To be effective, however, the questions need not be haphazard. IE has a pattern or a framework. 

(1) What can we eliminate? This could be a process, a value-adding or a non-value-adding operation, a delay or storage or idle or inspection. To eliminate is to improve! 

(2) What can we combine? The use of known faster devices often provides the answer. If two operations cannot be combined, it may be possible to combine a transportation with an operation. 

(3) Should the sequence be changed? Changes in sequence may eliminate or reduce non-value- adding operations, transportations, delays, storages, and inspections. Again, the use of known faster devices will often make this possible. 

(4) What can we simplify? The time to start to think about ways to simplify operations is when the processes and operations have been reduced (some times they can be increased also) as much as possible through elimination, combination, and/or change of sequence. In this step also the six basic questions of work simplification are used over and over again: What? Why? Where? When'' Who? How? 

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