Competency Mapping and Assessment

Competency Mapping and Assessment Case Study

In a manufacturing environment, effective maintenance teams are critical to overall success.

Our client, a multi-national food and grocery manufacturing entity with operations across North America, was experiencing significant difficulty filling open positions for maintenance technicians, resulting in high overtime costs, employee dissatisfaction and burnout, and maintenance productivity issues that resulted in significant re-work, unscheduled downtime, and loss of production.

We worked with maintenance management and experienced technicians over a three week period to develop a thorough understanding of the tasks and critical skills across all the maintenance trades in the plant, conduct assessments of workers against these skills, and provide recommendations to management on how to optimize crew composition to ensure adequate skills across a shift, while providing development opportunities for workers to improve skills through internal mentoring.

Results:

• The company was able to use the resulting competency profile to accurately target a new hire for a position that had been open for several months. The individual was tested against the profile, hired for their proficiency in the critical skills, and on-boarded through a personalized process that ensured they were capable of independent work in the plant in record time (less than the 3-month probationary period).
• The company experienced a significant reduction in unscheduled downtime (-38%) within 6 months of the program being implemented
• The plant recorded improvements in safety, quality and productivity metrics that allowed them to exceed all operating KPIs within one operating quarter of the program being implemented

The program was subsequently rolled out to 7 additional facilities in Canada, with similar results in every case.