Students (& mentors) are trained on manufacturing machines
Some of them then use the machines regularly
Others do not, and then when they’re asked to do so later, they’re not confident
I have proposed we record some brief videos that would not be the primary training but would instead be intended to refresh a previously trained person on the procedure. And I am considering using QR codes posted by the machines so the videos are easy to discover and access.
I love the idea! CNC machines are the worst for the “that one critical step” and the “forgot to put the part at the right location/orientation”… I have my own cheat sheet for my CNC to remind me!
We’ve tried various versions of this over the years, both for work at our shop and for the team. This is a huge part of “lean manufacturing” and there is tons of examples of this online this being my favorite resource: https://piersonworkholding.com/lean/
We’ve found it easier for the team to just have a notion board with all our training docs and how-tos. A lot of stuff like “how to shut down the laser cutter”, which for our industrial equipment is 5-6 steps.
Thanks for sharing this resource. I do think using lean tools to reduce waste and focus on value during an FRC build season is a very good approach. I’ve seen the results of this in the past. Have you found that it’s accessible for your student leaders to lead the lean culture and generate buy in?
While restructuring our team leadership this year we are musing about adding a Lean CI captain for a manufacturing student who might be interested in an operations or process engineering track. I wonder if we will even be able to fill the role consistently and if it’s a better approach to just set the culture from the mentor level and bring all the students through off-season exercises like value stream analysis and kaizen events.