Recording Shop Floor Management Competencies – A Guideline for a Systematic Competency Gap Analysis☆

Shop floor management is one of the major management approaches in lean production. Through activating the potentials of the employees, shop floor management aims at continuously improving processes and developing competencies of the employees. It has established itself as a method to regularly inform, challenge and develop employees and processes alike, e.g. by tracking, analyzing, and systematically solving deviations. However, to fully use the potential of shop floor management the essential abilities and more specifically the competencies for it need to be developed through all hierarchical levels, i.e. workers and management alike. A solid plan for competency development must be based on an accurate analysis regarding the current status of the appropriate workforce competencies. Thus, this paper presents an approach for recording shop floor management competencies and comparing them against a set of target competencies in form of a practical and systematic gap analysis guideline.