Assignment: Introduction to Human Performance Technology

Case Study 1: The PaceTronics Stor

You have been hired by PaceTronics - a local company specializing in the design and manufacture of high-tech heart pacemakers for patients with heart disease such as congestive heart failure.

There have been numerous complaints from PaceTronics' customers in the last six months related to the quality of the products being shipped from PaceTronics (PT). While the design and technology of the PT pacemakers is undisputed, many units shipped are not assembled correctly or are failing prematurely due to out-of-spec parts being used in the manufacture process. If this problem continues, PT could suffer the loss of its most important customers and also risk huge liability lawsuits from patients being implanted with defective units. PT's customers want to continue buying the PT pacemakers but want assurances that the quality issues will be resolved. They have given PT a maximum of 6 months to resolve this issue or they will switch to another supplier.

PT's main competitor, the GoodHeart (GH) Corporation has been ruthlessly advertising and approaching PT's customers with messaging around their strict quality control and offering all kinds of warranties and other incentives for their products. GH's products are not as advanced as PT's though.

A few months ago, a consulting company was hired to analyze the problem and suggest a solution. Their analysis revealed that most of the quality issues were due to new personnel in the PT factories not fully understanding the different steps in assembling and testing the PT pacemaker. One of PT's most important factories is based in Bangalore, India with the remainder located in three US sites.

Most of the people working in PT's factories are young. Some are college graduates with degrees in engineering and other disciplines. Some of the India employees may have (language) problems understanding some of the highly technical manuals used in the assembly and testing of the PT1 pacemaker.

The assembly of the PT1 involves the careful soldering of intricate parts, mostly done by a soldering machine that requires close supervision. This machine needs to be "fed" with the right materials and components at the right time to ensure its uptime.

Once each PT1 is assembled, it is connected to the PT1000 tester machine. This is an extremely complex machine attached to a computer that runs the test suite and reports its findings. Based on the test findings, the operator determines if the device is ready to ship or needs to have specific components replaced to bring it within spec.

The consulting company hired by PT determined that the main problem affecting PT was a lack of knowledge by the assembly and test folks on the PT1 lines. PT has only 2 subject matter experts available to train the folks doing this work and they have been stressed to the limit by having to constantly fly to PT's 4 factories in the US and India. Their training has been mainly classroom-based standup classes taught using self-prepared PowerPoint slides. Most of the classes are taught offsite at a local hotel.

Another problem seems to be retention. While most of the folks that take the training seem to go back to their workplace and reduce their errors, after a week or so, the error rates go back up again. Senior management wants to make sure any training plan that is developed includes some way to track employee training including what classes were taken and what level of proficiency was achieved.

After an exhaustive search for the right person, PT has hired you as their new Corporate Training Manager. The company's two SMEs have been told to give you as much of their time as they can (although they're constantly flying to the factories to retrain folks on the manufacturing processes) and you've been given the budget to hire two people who will report to you. You have a fairly sizeable budget ($200K) to order whatever equipment you need.

You've just walked out of a meeting where executive management has told you that you have 3 weeks to come up with a worldwide training plan that drastically cuts (less than 1 reject in 1000) or eliminates the quality issues altogether. You have 4 worldwide factories with 500 employees in each one that will need training.

Ideas to consider:

• What technology will you use to solve this problem?
• What will you spend your budget on?
• What kinds of folks will you hire?
• How will you work with your (stressed!) SMEs?
• How will you know when your job is done?

You will need to present your strategy proposal to a Management Review Committee (MRC) who will have the ultimate approval authority for your project.