Employee competences in manufacturing companies – an expert survey
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present competences that are highly relevant for manufacturing today and tomorrow. Following a discussion on the concept of “competence”, a variety of competences are presented and classified into the four facets professional, methodological, social, and self-competence.
Design/methodology/approach
Using an exploratory method, the paper aims at describing relevant manufacturing-related competences with the help of an online survey. Experts, mostly from the production management or HR departments of manufacturing companies in Germany, were polled and asked to evaluate the relevancy of a list of competences for manufacturing.
Findings
For the experts, flawless execution and quality awareness are competences with a very high relevance, whereas analytical abilities have very little meaning. The experts questioned expect openness to change to undergo the strongest increase in importance.
Practical implications
This paper shows competences particularly relevant for future production, so that companies can derive specific competence development measures. The findings are descriptive only, but should enable companies to identify specific competence gaps and to select measures to develop competences.
Originality/value
This paper attempts to bridge the gap between academics and practice by outlining relevant manufacturing competences that have been evaluated by managers. This is in contrast to most scientific research that classifies manufacturing-related competences as important based on own assessment.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
IGF project 17696 N of the research association Bundesvereinigung Logistik e.V. (BVL, Schlachte 31, 28195 Bremen, Germany) was funded by the research alliance AiF within the scope of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology program to promote industrial research (IGF), which is based on a resolution of the German Parliament.
Citation
Meyer, G., Brünig, B. and Nyhuis, P. (2015), "Employee competences in manufacturing companies – an expert survey", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 34 No. 8, pp. 1004-1018. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-06-2014-0056
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited