تحرک کارگری و آموزش در تولید پیشرفته

Worker training is a priority for manufacturing organizations, and State and Federal policymakers in the United States. There is a need among US manufacturing industries for a training process plan, including information on what to train the worker in given the changes in product, process, and system-level technologies, and how best to deliver such training at minimal cost. Also, from the viewpoint of the manufacturing worker, possession of transferable skills is commonly expected to provide the worker flexibility and mobility. The objectives of this paper are to examine the issues involved in generating such a training plan, and suggest a framework for generating such a plan. A case study illustrating application of elements of the training framework is also presented.

“…If we are obliged to lay men off for want of sufficient work at any season we purpose to so plan our year's work that the layoff shall be in the harvest time, July, August, and September, not in Winter. We hope in such case to induce our men to respond to the calls of the farmers for harvest hands, and not to idle and dissipate their savings. We shall make it our business to get in touch with the farmers and to induce our employees to answer calls for harvest help.” The above quotation is from an interview New York Times conducted with Henry Ford in January 1914. The issue addressed in the interview, namely, finding alternative work for workers who are laid off due to want of sufficient work, remains important and urgent even today. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ recent data on workers who had 3 or more years of tenure on a job they had lost or left between January 1995 and December 1997 because of plant or company closings or moves, insufficient work, or the abolishment of their positions or shifts, nearly 28% of the 3578 thousand displaced workers were manufacturing workers (both durable and non-durable goods manufacturing). Among the different durable goods manufacturing industries, nearly 33% of the 121,000 displaced workers in the machinery tool manufacturing industry were either unemployed or not in the labor force in February 1998. Nearly 36% of the 95,000 displaced workers in the transportation equipment manufacturing industry were either unemployed or not in the labor force in February 1998. These numbers were nearly 40% (of the 86,000 displaced workers), 56.9% (of the 109,000 displaced workers), 20% (of the 81,000 displaced workers) 40% (of the 39,000 displaced workers) in the food and kindred products manufacturing industry, the apparel and other finished textile product manufacturing industry, the printing and publishing manufacturing industry, and the rubber and other miscellaneous plastics products manufacturing industry, respectively. Table 1 provides recent Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates on displaced workers classified by occupation of lost job and employment status of the worker in February 1998.As can be seen from the table, nearly 21% of all displaced workers were either precision production, craft and repair workers, or were machine operators, fabricators and laborers. In addition, a large proportion of these workers also were unemployed or could not participate in the labor force. Table 2 is a summary of data on the full-time earnings of manufacturing workers who were reemployed (after losing their previous jobs between January 1995 and December 1997 because of plant or company closings or moves, insufficient work, or the abolishment of their positions or shifts) in February 1998. It is evident from Table 2 that among all US industries, not only were the highest percentage of displaced workers from the manufacturing industry, but also, that manufacturing workers were the ones whose immediate second jobs paid them the least (including the number that only made more than 20% above previous earnings, if above) compared to workers from all other industries who were reemployed.Compounding the problem is the fact that the data presented do not indicate the nature of the second job for manufacturing workers who found employment—it does not indicate if they found employment in manufacturing (which means they perhaps will get to use all the skills that they built in their previous job), or in some other industry (which will impose an additional burden on the new employer to train the person in the industry practices, and an additional intangible burden on the worker to have to let go of the previous skills and learn new skills). In summary, while many developments, chiefly technological, have taken place since 1914 in US manufacturing, manufacturing industries, to this day, continue to lay off workers in large numbers. Active provision of alternative work for such workers is the theme of this paper. An active provision of alternative work, rather than a passive or a reactive provision, imposes upon such a provision, several goals and characteristics, among which the two most important are: (a) in the long run, there should be little or no worker layoffs; (b) in the short run (before the effects of implementing the long-term provisions are realized), workers who are laid off should be able to find work, and work that pays them, at the very least, comparable to what their previous work paid. The long-term goal (a) above is achievable only through designing human-centered manufacturing systems that use and develop further the special and unique skills humans bring into the manufacturing domain. Designing human-centered manufacturing systems needs a careful examination of the thinking of the 1980s that human influence in manufacturing could be completely eliminated through complete automation of all manufacturing activities. The reality is fully automated factories based on hard automation are not viable especially in situations where a product is to be changed frequently because of user needs, costs, or engineering improvements. Hard automation of all manufacturing activities is also an economically undesirable option at the present time. In addition to technical and economic issues, humans are also considered to be important cybernetic components for control and innovation in manufacturing systems, a fact that further points to the desirability of human-centered manufacturing systems. Issues involved in designing human-centered manufacturing systems is discussed in Mital (1997) and Mital et al. (1999). This paper presents a framework to address the short-term goal (b) presented above. Specifically, the objective is to present a framework to generate a knowledge base that will equip the worker (the scope is restricted to line workers in US discrete product manufacturing) with mobility through the provision of skills and training. It is desirable for such a knowledge base to have the following two characteristics: (a) be applicable for all discrete product manufacturing industry groups such as automobile manufacturers, aircraft manufacturers, etc.; (b) contain worker training plans (including the training contents (skills), and training delivery protocols) that are optimal (most generic and least expensive for manufacturing industries). This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the integrated framework for development of the knowledge base, and outlines the impediments to implementing the framework. A case study in application of elements of the framework is presented in Section 3. Conclusions and future research directions for work with the framework are provided in Section 4.

A theoretical research framework is intended to conceptualize definitions, constructs, and research variables involved in a problem, and suggest possible hypotheses for research. Research using the framework presented in this paper will be iterative in nature—development of a training plan (including the instructional contents in the plan, and the best method to deliver such instruction), followed by a determination of how effectively the plan transfers to as many industries as possible, followed by a refinement of the training plan to increase the effectiveness of transfer to any one industry or extend the transfer base by including more industries. There are a number of issues in this iterative process that need to be addressed. Foremost among these are: (a) cataloguing the specific product, process, and system technologies in current use, and that are anticipated in future (any technology in the prototype stage, for example), in the discrete product manufacturing industries that are participants in any work involving the framework; (b) based on input from each industrial participant, and based on the framework elements for skill development, developing generic skill sets containing the instructions (the meta-knowledge, the rules, and skills needed to operate technology); (c) experimentation (including all the traditional training variables from industrial psychology) with the developed skill set including determination of good training methods for imparting the generated common (to all industries) skill set; (d) development of a measurement system for determining the effectiveness of the transfer to each industry participant, and thereby, the mobility that the training plan can provide a trainee; (e) once a measure for mobility is established, one of the specific hypothesis that can be tested is: does the longitudinal training model ( Fig. 2) presented as part of the framework result in greater mobility, or does the cross-training model ( Fig. 3) result in greater mobility? (f) an important contribution of research with the framework will be integration of manufacturing engineering and cognitive engineering precepts—for instance, development of an effective training plan will provide deeper insight into how humans learn; this insight can ultimately be used in designing technology that will facilitate human operation, and not require any training for its use; the eventual goal will be the design and operation of human-centered manufacturing systems, that use the skills that humans inherently bring into an activity; (g) research using the framework can also contribute significantly to knowledge in the labor economics field, specifically, the concept of human capital (where training the human is considered an investment) and the enhancement of human capital; (h) another important offshoot of the results from this framework will be the integration of the skills and training knowledge base in the curriculum of schools and other training providers—training is a big budget activity in the USA, and the availability of an effective training plan that minimizes cost will result in a better utilization of available resources; and (i) the framework, in itself, is subject to revision and change—with the emergence of newer forms of work such as telecommuting to work, remote manipulation, etc., any framework for imparting skills and training should be flexible as well.