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Multiskilling
Suggested answers
Activity 1
What is meant by the term multiskilling?
Multiskilling is where an industry is organised so that workers have a range of skills appropriate for use on a project. A multiskilled worker’s range of skills may fall outside their original trade.
Activity 2
A company experiencing financial
difficulties is attempting to trade out of the problems. One idea is to retrench
staff to reduce production costs, but it is decided to introduce multiskilling
to help solve the financial problems.
Explain how multiskilling may reduce production costs and relieve the financial pressure.
By increasing level of multiskilling in the manufacture of a product, part or component a company can improve its efficiency and relieve financial difficulties. Examples of multiskilling benefits include: project efficiency, competitive market and effective management.
In project efficiency, multiskilled workers carry projects through from the start to the finish, with a reduced number of workers involved. Through this decrease of labor cost and reduced turnaround time, the cost saving are passed onto the customer, which promotes a competitive market. All this means effective management where costs can be reduced in areas of production completion time, minimum production line delays, diminished project planning time and the decrease of administration costs.
Activity 3
Access the web site at:
http://www.employment-studies.co.uk/summary/summary.php?id=336 
and find the document Productive skills for Process Operatives. The
document looks at the multiple skills required for an operative in this
industry. List these skills.
The main skills and abilities can be summarised as:
- Basic skills: literacy and numeracy.
- Other key skills: IT skills; communication skills; team working and interpersonal skills.
- Occupation specific skills:technical understanding; engineering skills; problem solving; analytical skills; maintaining standards; administration and management and business awareness.
- Personal skills: personal hygiene; flexibility; an ability and willingness to learn; maturity; a positive attitude to work; physical fitness and manual dexterity.
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