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Task analysis establishes a solid foundation for technical training.
The following story was shared by Scot McLemore, corporate technical development unit manager for Honda of America Manufacturing, and Robert Norton, DACUM International Training Center director at the Center on Education and Training for Employment (CETE) at The Ohio State University (OSU).
Client
Honda of America Manufacturing
Opportunity
After the economic downturn company sales plummeted. To save costs, Honda focused almost exclusively on internal talent sourcing, rather than external hiring, by training its production associates to become skilled technicians. Soon technical leaders began to observe that many of these new technicians, while qualified, were not prepared to meet all the technical demands of the job.
Diagnosis
Honda's one-year Technical Fundamentals Program teaches basic technical skills to production associates who are interested in becoming technicians. The company's new talent development environment revealed that the program was not effectively preparing production associates for technician positions. Also, recent equipment and technology changes added to this growing need to re-examine existing training content.
Methods
McLemore and his team partnered with CETE/OSU to complete the DACUM process. DACUM, which stands for Developing A CurriculUM, is a unique approach to job analysis that determines which tasks must be performed by a given occupational area.
Five to 12 top-performing expert workers form a panel, and with the guidance of a qualified DACUM facilitator, describe the occupation precisely in terms of the duties and tasks that must be performed. This process produces a DACUM Research Chart—a graphic profile of all of the tasks required of successful workers in the occupation. After task verification and task analysis, the information gathered from the experts serves as the foundation for developing a new or updating an existing training program.
In Honda's case, its high-performing technicians identified the fundamental skills required for all technicians in their various roles across the organization. The expert panel and CETE/OSU facilitators completed nine analyses to determine the tasks technicians should complete and conducted a task analysis to determine how they should perform them. From this list of tasks, Honda surveyed staff from its various technical departments for priority ratings.
Next, Honda's technical training team determined how to teach each of the top-rated tasks most effectively. The team structured the Technical Fundamentals Program and the subsequent four-year Technician Development Program to align with each other, as well as across the various technical disciplines. Honda then hired instructional designers to work with its internal team of subject matter experts—former maintenance and equipment service technicians—to design the training curriculum and activities.
Results
The DACUM process revealed that both programs required additional training content. The Technical Fundamentals Program evolved from 30 to 150 hours of training delivered through self-paced and blended learning, including computer-based training for theory and a hands-on component. The Technician Development Program evolved from 320 to 680 hours of instruction delivered for two to three weeks every six months. DACUM also informed the training timeline—Honda learned at what points in technicians' careers they needed to learn which tasks, and revamped the Technician Development Program to better align to this natural career progression.
Lesson learned
The DACUM process provides valuable information because job experts are the ones who complete the job and task analysis. It establishes an excellent baseline from which to develop any training curriculum. Additionally, access to expert resources when developing the curriculum is critical.