Technology-based Incumbent Worker Training

Pacific Mountain WIRED Region in Washington State

Small and medium sized business often can't afford to send their employees off the work site to participate in extended training programs.  So Westport Shipyards decided to bring the training to the employees by developing DVD-based training modules that could be completed by employees on site.

Westport Shipyards partnered with the Pacific Mountain Workforce Development Council and the Northwest Marine Manufacturing and Technology Skill Panel  to develop a visually interactive training tool to be shared regionally. The result was a DVD that allows incumbent workers to be trained on site during normal business hours with outstanding results.

The training DVD visually demonstrates the detailed steps taken in a production process and clearly shows expected outcomes.  The results: reduced down-time, accelerated production process and increased teamwork, communication and problem solving.  Westport estimates there is a savings of approximately 10 minutes per employee, per task trained.  If on average each employee performs 4-5 tasks per day that is a savings of 40-50 minutes, greatly increasing productivity while improving the skills sets of employees.