Managing the level of skill training of its workers is one of the best-kept secrets of Toyota’s success. This company was a pioneer in implementing the ILUO system in its production plants, a change that allowed them to achieve operational excellence through the professional development of the organisation’s staff. In this article we explain the benefits of imitating the Japanese giant with the help of the Mapex Skill Management module.
The quality of production, delivery performance and the success of the business depend to a large extent on the people who work in a factory. This is why, despite increasing robotisation and automation in the manufacturing industry, human capital remains one of the strengths of today’s organisations.
In this context, the education and skill training of workers in the activities they must carry out is key for any company to prosper and maintain its position in an increasingly competitive and changing environment.
In some industries, this management of operator skill training is even more important due to the complexity of their production processes, job changes caused by different volumes of activity or the variability of demand.
Next, we will see how the implementation of the ILUO system can be a turning point in the management of operator skill training in your industrial company and what are the benefits of putting it into practice with the help of Mapex.
What is the ILUO matrix?
The ILUO matrix is a training system implemented by Toyota in the middle of the 20th century and is particularly useful in industrial companies where highly technical and critical production processes are carried out.
In fact, large companies in the automotive, aeronautics and metallurgy sectors use this matrix to manage the professionalism levels of their workers.
The ILUO system is also derived from the Lean Manufacturing methodology, as it aims to help industrial companies achieve operational excellence by developing the technical and practical skills of their workforce, thus maximising value creation for the end customer.
How the ILUO system works
The acronym ILUO has a graphic meaning, in other words, the number of strokes that form each letter defines the level of training of the operator and represents his development and maturity as a professional in the organisation.
Having said that, the four ILUO skill levels are:
I or level 1: The worker is completely dependent and requires an operator who has already mastered the process to tell him what to do, how to do it and to supervise him while he does it.
L or level 2: The worker already knows how to do the tasks, but still needs to be told what to do and requires some supervision.
U or level 3: The worker is already able to do things on his or her own and without supervision, but is not yet fully independent in deciding what needs to be done.
O or level 4: The worker is fully independent and can act as a supervisor or trainer of colleagues.
Objectives and benefits of the ILUO methodology
Companies that choose to implement this model of acquiring and measuring the skill level of operators in their production plants pursue different goals, for example:
- Monitoring the evolution of the organisation’s employees and quantifying the effectiveness of training actions.
- Guaranteeing the operational continuity of the factory and being able to respond to market demands, ensuring that there is always a person ready to execute the most critical and complex processes.
- Being able to rotate personnel in the most cumbersome, heavy or repetitive jobs.
- Achieving maximum productivity by investing the necessary resources to bring the majority of operators up to level 3 or 4 training.
- Driving continuous improvement and increasing quality levels, as a trained operator produces faster and with fewer defects and incidents.
The implementation of the ILUO system also results in a series of benefits that have a very positive impact on:
- The quality of production.
- The waste minimisation.
- The reduction of stoppages due to absenteeism, turnover or lack of knowledge and experience.
- The prevention of workplace injuries.
- The level of customer satisfaction.
- The motivation of the operators.
Manage the skill level of production workers with Mapex
At Mapex we have a new module for configuring and managing the skill level of production workers. This is a very useful tool for industrial companies that want to detect and automatically determine the levels of professionalism required for their workers to be able to carry out certain processes and/or handle certain machines.
Using the Mapex platform, it is possible to register the different training required for each of the plant’s production processes and their ILUO skill levels. Operators can be upgraded according to the hours accumulated performing a specific task and/or training actions. Our solution manages the different level changes and provides global functions to allow or deny a user access to a specific work centre according to their skill level.
Level changes can be applied automatically or, on the other hand, they can be managed manually by a manager. Mapex can also downgrade an operator if he has not performed a task for a long time or for any other reason. In any case, the tool automatically generates an alert on the shop floor for the affected operator when a level change occurs.
In addition, our software ensures that the tasks are supervised by qualified operators, i.e. only when an instructor has clocked in at a workplace, can workers at a lower level also clock in.
Finally, this new module makes it possible to visualise the ILUO matrix by profession, skill and operator. In this way, companies can quickly see the level of polyvalence of their workforce and plan training actions to improve it.
