Author: Jeffrey Dalto

What Is Kaizen?

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What Is Kaizen ImageIf you know the vocabulary and methods of lean manufacturing, you know the terms kaizen and kaizen event. You may even have participated in a kaizen culture or a kaizen event.

On the other hand, you may have never heard these terms, or maybe you’ve heard them but don’t yet know what they mean. If so, this article is for you, because we’re going to tell you what kaizen is. In a different article, we clue you in on what a kaizen event is as well, and we’ll explain the differences.

To learn even more, check out our courses on lean manufacturing.

So let’s get on in our effort to answer the question: What is Kaizen? 

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Book Review: Analyzing Performance Problems (or, You Really Oughta Wanna), by Robert Mager and Peter Pipe

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book-reveiw

We just read Analyzing Performance Problems, or, You Really Oughta Wanna by Robert Mager and Peter Pipe, one of six books in the classic “Mager’s Six Pack” series. In this article, we’ll give you a short book review. We have another article if you’d like to study his performance problem analysis method in more detail.

Before we begin, know that this is part of a series of articles looking at the books and ideas in Mager’s Six Pack. So far, we’ve also got articles on the following:

With that out of way, let’s get to this book review.

Need any help with your training program at work? Check out the e-learning courses from Convergence Training, our family of learning management systems, or just contact us.

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Evaluating Safety Training Effectiveness (Based on ANSI Z490.1, Section 6)

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evaluating the effectiveness of EHS training image

Hello.

This post focuses on best practices for evaluating environmental, health, and safety (EHS) training. That means a couple things: evaluating how well your employees learned from their EHS training and, of course, evaluating the EHS training itself. Plus, it means using that evaluation information during continuous improvement efforts.

This article, like others in the series, is based on some of the guidelines in ANSI Z490.1, the standard that lists “Criteria for Accepted Practices in Safety, Health, and Environmental Training. In particular, this article is based on Section 6 of the standard.

If you want to download our free 42-page Guide to Effective EHS Training, click that link you just whizzed past or scroll down to the bottom of this article and click the download button.

Otherwise, let’s get learning about evaluating EHS training.

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Book Review: Robert Mager’s Goals Analysis

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book-reveiw

We just read Robert Mager’s Goals Analysis, one of six books in the classic “Mager’s Six Pack” series. In this article, we’ll give you a short book review. We have another article if you’d like to study his goals analysis method in more detail.

Before we begin, know that this is part of a series of articles looking at the books and ideas in Mager’s Six Pack. So far, we’ve also got articles on the following:

With that out of way, let’s get to this book review.

Need any help with your training program at work? Check out the e-learning courses from Convergence Training, our family of learning management systems, or just contact us.

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Using an LMS to Onboard New Hires More Effectively, Efficiently

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LMS for Onboarding New Employees Image

Onboarding new employees can be time consuming, difficult, and inefficient. And, for a number of reasons–it’s often ineffective. If you’ve done it before, you already know this.

You can onboard new employees more quickly, efficiently, and effectively by using a learning management system (LMS). An LMS is a software application that companies can use to import, create, assign, deliver, and track training. You can use an LMS to deliver all sorts of training. This can include training specific to various job roles, HR training, and safety training. And–yes–you can also use an LMS when onboarding new employees.

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Chunking Mining Safety Training Materials: Improve Your Mine Safety Training

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Chunking Mining Safety Training Image

We just wrote an extended blog post that explains the benefits of “chunking” your training materials and gives tips for how to do it.

Click here to read the extended article on chunking.

Otherwise, if you’d like a high-level overview of chunking and then would like to see how you can use chunking to make your mining safety training program more effective, read on.

The Bird’s Eye View on Chunking Training Materials

  1. Chunking refers to taking training material (during the design phase), breaking the training materials up into little “bite-sized” parts, and then organizing them in a way that makes the material easier for your employees to learn.
  2. Chunking is helpful because of how our brains work when we learn-in particular, the limits on our working memory to hold only about four bits of information at a time.
  3. Although learners who are novices or experts in a given topic can each only remember about four chunks at a time, experts can remember bigger chunks.
  4. You should arrange chunks within training materials in a way that makes it easier for your employees to understand and remember them. Some organizational methods include job sequence, dependent learning, cause and effect, and whole to parts, but there are more.
  5. Chunking training materials begins at a high level–the entire curriculum, for example–and then works its way down through modules, lessons, courses, and screens (or similar sub-divisions of your training materials).

A quick head’s-up for ya here: We’ve included a free Guide to MSHA Training Requirements at the bottom of this article.

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How to Deliver EHS Training: (Based on ANSI Z490.1, Section 5)

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delivering EHS training image (Note: This article is based on the newly revised, 2016 version of ANSI Z490.1.)

Hello. We’re back with our continuing look at effective EHS training. The series takes its cues from and expands on the ANSI Z490.1 standard on EHS training.

In this post, we’re going to take an in-depth look at Section 5, which is all about delivering EHS training.

The strong focus is on the EHS trainer in this one, plus there’s some stuff about training delivery and training materials.

If you want to download our free 42-page Guide to Effective EHS Training just click that link you just whizzed past. Or you’ll get another chance at the bottom of this article.

So with that said, let’s learn more about effective EHS training delivery, including trainers, training delivery, and training materials, right?

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5S + Safety = Lean 6S Safety

Jeffrey Dalto 3 Comments
5S Safety 6S Lean Image

You’ve probably heard of 5S. If so, you know it’s a method for organizing a work area to increase efficiency and productivity while reducing waste. And it’s one of the first steps that many companies make while trying to become “lean.”

If you didn’t know that before, now you do.

5S can help make a company lean, but it also can improve safety and health at the company. It makes sense, because a more organized, tidier workplace is going to have fewer hazards. For example, if your housekeeping is better, you’ll have fewer tripping hazards. And if you’ve organized the workplace so tools and machines are placed more appropriately, your workers will have fewer ergonomic risks.

Even though 5S comes with “built-in” safety benefits, that’s not the end of the story. Over time, people have modified 5S by adding a new “S” to create 6S systems. One of the most common of the 6S systems results from adding Safety to 5S. This is sometimes called 5S+, 6S, lean 6S, 6S safety, or lean 6S safety.

In this article, we’ll learn more about 5S and/or 6S and how you can use it to create a more organized, efficient, productive, and safe workplace. To learn even more, check out our series of 5S online training courses and lean manufacturing training courses.

And at the very bottom of this article, you can download a free 5S infographic–nice! 

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How to Identify and Close Skill Gaps at Work

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identifying-and-closing-the-skill-gap-blogConsider this scenario, if you will.

You’re a training manager. Or maybe you’re someone else who is involved in training–the head of operations, or in HR, or the safety manager.

You or someone else at work determines there’s a performance problem. More specifically, you think your employees may have a skill gap.

What’s the answer? Create and lead some training? Well, maybe. But maybe not.

It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that training’s the answer for everything. But there’s nothing worse than creating a training program for a problem that the training can’t solve. You’ve now spent a bunch of money and time creating and delivering the training, and you’ve still got the problem to boot.

The best way to avoid this scenario is to take a step back and analyze the performance problem first. If you learn more about the problem, you can then figure out what the best solution for it is. Maybe it WILL be training, but maybe it will be something else.

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What Is the Hierarchy of Controls?

Jeffrey Dalto 11 Comments
What is the Hierarchy of Controls image

What’s the best way to protect your workers from hazards at the workplace?

One common and effective method is to use the hierarchy of controls. To which you may ask-but what is the hierarchy of controls? That’s the focus on this article, and we’ll explain it in full detail.

First, though, we’ll set the scene, by explaining what a hazard is, how to identify hazards, how to assess and prioritize hazards for controls–using the hierarchy of controls, of course.
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How to Do a Job Hazard Analysis: 4 Essential Steps

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job hazard analysis (JHA) imageNot that long ago, we wrote a blog post titled What Is a JHA? That post was such a big hit we’ve created this second post. It walks you though the steps of performing a JHA, and  even includes a free downloadable guide to performing JHAs at the bottom.

This guide for performing a JHA incorporates suggestions made in OSHA’s Job Hazard Analysis booklet (OSHA 3071, revised in 2002). We think you’ll find it useful when you perform JHAs at your worksite.

Performing JHAs at work will improve your safety record and general EHS compliance. So let’s get started with our tips on how to do a job hazard analysis.

Of course, we’ve prepared a free guide to conducting a JHA for you too–you can download it at the bottom of this article or here.

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How to Develop EHS Training (ANSI Z490.1 Section 4)

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How to Develop Effective EHS Training Image

(Note: This article is based on the newly revised, 2016 version of ANSI Z490.1.)

Let’s continue our series of articles about ANSI Z490.1, the US national standard that lays out “Criteria for Accepted Practices in Safety, Health, and Environmental Training.”

In this post, we’ll look at Section 4 of the standard, which focuses on how to develop effective EHS training.
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