Success Story

Developing Leaders in Manufacturing Today

With today’s competitive market and the changing state of the manufacturing industry, Component Repair Technologies recognized the need to constantly adapt to remain a leader in their industry.

One crucial strategy that they established for growth was to ensure they have the strongest leaders in place to lead teams through changes and advances. For CRT, looking outside the company for this management talent was not an option; instead, they created an in-house program to develop their managers.

Because CRT has doubled in size over the last five years, they knew that their leadership development track had to be implemented quickly and effectively. Knowing growth can have a drastic impact on a company’s culture, leadership took this into account when tasking the training department with creating a plan.

CRT’s leadership carefully selected a development solution that would fit their unique needs.

A New Way to Develop Leaders

CRT’s training department got to work immediately by conducting a study and making recommendations to senior management as to which methods would work best for implementing a leadership training program.

The team studied local college leadership and management programs, looked at the possibility of retaining consultants to do on-site training, and researched what other local private companies had for structured training programs.

After extensive research, they concluded that the cost of training at local colleges was acceptable; however; because of the high time requirement, this solution wouldn’t make sense for them. They quickly realized that retaining a consultant to conduct on-site training was much more expensive than anticipated and expressed concerns that a third-party consultant wouldn’t take their learning-focused culture into consideration.

After reviewing various training content libraries in the marketplace, the training department recognized that BizLibrary’s large collection of videos in management and business skills would make an excellent fit as their content and learning management system provider.

“BizLibrary was far superior to competitors, in our opinion. Our workforce is comprised of not only engineers, but also production workers. We needed a solution that offered an educational experience at every level that would help them grow and keep the focus on our learning goals.”

– David Ivey, Training Supervisor

With the full support of senior leaders, Component Repair Technologies partnered with BizLibrary in March of 2017 to implement their Leadership Development Program, which included a class of over fifty key leads, supervisors, and managers within the company.

The program was created with three goals in mind: increase development of future leadership, grow current management skills, and implement succession planning and personal development plans for the team.

The training department designed a program that included lectures, interactive discussions, and role playing in a large classroom setting with leaders interacting with one another by sharing ideas and experiences. Additionally, homework assignments were incorporated utilizing The BizLibrary Collection’s library.

This blended learning approach was well received by participants. Valuable class time was used to discuss, at length, the disciplines offered by the Bizlibrary microlearning videos.

CRT noticed two unintentional, yet positive outcomes by adopting this approach. First, discussion around the videos during classroom workshops provided a new venue for the transfer of knowledge between generational groups. Second, by placing the current and future leaders of our company in the same class, a camaraderie and respect for one another was created. This “team” spirit is now evident throughout the company.

Training Program Results

Since implementing the leadership program and partnering with BizLibrary, CRT has seen mangers take ownership of their learning, ensuring the success of their teams.

For example, one first time technical program manager took it upon himself to take additional training on how to handle difficult people before meeting to discuss an instance with an employee. The night before the meeting, he began to wonder if he was handling the situation correctly and doing the “right” thing. He decided to login to the company’s BizLibrary site to search for content to help. After watching video lessons on the topic, he confidently met with the employee to solve the situation.

In addition to results like this, individual participants are having high levels of success and course completion, and CRT is seeing improvements to the organization overall.

The leadership development program is being measured in several ways such as participant questionnaires, employee turnover rate, and production numbers like reworks, director labor, and ultimate profitability. Though the program is still in its first year, preliminary results are already showing improvement in each of these areas.

The new development program was launched with 55 managers, supervisors, and leaders. Within the first year CRT assigned a total of 1,800 video lessons. They currently have a 95% completion rate for these lessons on top of their elective usage.

“We remain competitive by focusing on our employees; partnering with BizLibrary to maintain our quality of product and quality of service has put us at the forefront of our competitors and in front of our customers. BizLibrary has definitely added to the bottom line of Component Repair Technologies.”

– David Ivey