October 15, 2019 Industry Forum Blog Team Leader Essentials Programme (TLE) Team Leaders play a vital and pivotal role in ensuring the organisation achieves and exceeds their key strategic objectives in today’s competitive manufacturing market but the question that arises is “how well are they trained?”, in modern lean manufacturing methodologies, ensuring their capabilities are adequately supporting the business’s needs. It’s well recognised and understood that training is a key component of developing a Team Leader’s skillset and capability but that alone doesn’t verify the individual’s competency or alignment to the business requirements. Typical off the shelf training offers no stimulation for debate or shop floor based activities for the team leaders to apply their new skills. This is usually followed by handing over a large booklet of materials covered during the training, and then wishing them all the very best with managing their teams and driving a culture of high performing team. Frequently that type of training will not be at all effective or beneficial to either the individual or organisation. What is required is a programme that allows the individuals to combine blended learning underpinned by implementing an improvement project, which can be measured against one of these 4 metrics; Quality, Cost, Delivery or Safety. This will enable them to demonstrate their competency level by applying the tools & techniques learnt. Ultimately the metric used for the improvement project will be aligned to the organisation’s strategic direction. Topics Covered Some of the core topics taught during the TLE programme. Daily Management Start of Shift 8 Wastes 5S & Visual Management PDCA Standard Work Data Analysis Problem Solving / A3 thinking Effective Communication / Feedback Line Balance / SMED Coaching The TLE programme can be be entirely bespoke to the organisation’s requirements. The TLE programme will firstly, help team leaders to understand the fundamental lean principles in order to ensure an efficient, effective and competitive organisation followed by creating & managing a high performing team that drives & thrives for continuous improvement. Part of the blended learning the team leaders will be given log-in details to Industry Forum’s E-Learning platform, where they can review the teach-points prior to the training, giving them a taster for each of the topics, which can be accessed multiple times (even after the completing the training up to 12 months). The 3 days of the training consists of shop-floor, team based activities and a simulation. Following this each team leader selects an improvement project in their work area that will be aligned to the business strategy or improvement programme. The team leaders will be supported to create an individual project plan in the form of A3 document that the organisation will use to own and monitor the individual’s project progress. Industry Forum will provide on-site support to the team leaders to complete their A3 document, being a mediator for any road blocks that may arise during project implementation, whilst enhancing and developing the team leader’s coaching skills. This forms part of the 3 days of on-site support to the team leaders over 3 months after the initial training. A final day is then arranged for the team leaders to present back to their senior management team about their improvement project using a PowerPoint presentation or a ‘Show & Tell’ activity. During the feedback session the senior management team will be able to see the impact of the improvement project to the organisation’s bottom line, individual’s capability enhancement, ask any project related questions and to recognise the team leader’s achievements by giving them a TLE completion certificate. After the TLE programme, if the organisation wants to get further nationally recognised qualification then Industry Forum can support the organisation on NVQ Business Improvement Techniques. To start developing and training your team leaders to support the organisation’s key objective please click here to book or speak to one of our experts in creating your bespoke Team Leader Essential Programme.
