Your Best Operator Can't Train the Job. Here's the Fix.
Why does quality slip the week your best operator takes vacation? The real job never got written down. It lives in one set of hands, and every time those hands are off the floor, the crew reinvents it.
The Problem
Most training on the floor sounds like "follow Joe around for a week." Joe's your best, so it feels safe. Joe teaches a slightly different version every time, though. He skips the reasons because he stopped thinking about them years ago, and he can't always tell you which steps matter and which ones are his own habit.
So new people fill the gaps with their own guesses. You get variation, rework, near misses and a training clock that never stops ticking. The day Joe retires, thirty years of know-how walks out the door with him.
When a job lives in one person's hands, it walks out the door the day they do.
The Shift
Doing the job and teaching the job are two different skills. Your top operator has the first one in spades. Writing the job down closes the gap. Break it into its real steps, the key points that make or break it, and the reason behind each one, and anyone can teach it the same way. That's the heart of TWI Job Instruction, and it starts with one sheet.
Tool Drop: The Job Breakdown Sheet
Three columns: Important Steps, Key Points and Reasons. Build it in six moves:
Pick one job. Start with the one that hurts most when it's done wrong.
Do it and watch it. Write each important step as it happens.
Find the key points. Anything that makes or breaks safety, quality or the feel of the job.
Write the reason. Why each key point matters, in plain words.
Check it with your veteran. Your best operator confirms nothing is missing.
Train from the sheet. Every trainer teaches the same steps, the same way.
Download the free PDF or see every free tool.
The Cheat Code
The know-how you never write down walks out the door with the person who has it.
Want this running on every shift without another spreadsheet to babysit? The Leadership Operation System puts these tools on every leader's phone and shows you, on one page, who is using them.
Golden Nugget
When the job lives on paper, your best people are free to build what's next.
Warmly,
Dave
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