The training solution for cutting edge manufacturing clients is understanding the dependancies of real-world use and the horizon of scalability. By re-focusing on the end result and its applicability in the real-world use, new technology gets a reality check on usability and scalability.

By using the ‘Backward Triple Spiral’ method, development, organizational,  and community stakeholders are looped in and architecture becomes more inclusive at the start. Keeping in mind that each loop has different timing, dependancies, and deliverables:

• First Loop Development insights and planning:

  Most interactive developers, subject matter experts, and project owners are not trained in learning science. Understanding perspective taking, understanding best of breed simulation frameworks, and implementing gesture and embodied cognition are just some of the ways to inject learning science into more effective training.

• Second loop organizational learning:

  With hundreds of C-Suite and founder meetings under my belt, the organization needs to grow the capacity to learn. Closing off various organizational stakeholders is a recipe for a silo learning application. Insights in understanding the needs of all stakeholders from the project owner to the field user are critical to understanding the organizations ability to transform and grow.

• Third loop of development:

  The community or the field is where the funds of knowledge exist. I have seen too many training applications that never included the customer, the client, or the prospect. If your first question is what real-world knowledge, skills, and abilities would be present outside with customers, partners, suppliers, or wholesalers, why aren’t they included in the development cycle? That is why I call for ‘community edge learning’ where the application is in plain sight of the trainee and the community. So stop training people in a closet or cubicle, and start training them within the community, factory, or customer setting they need to be in as soon as possible to develop the real-life skills they need.

The results are groundbreaking. Now training is no longer a break-out box hidden in the annual report, it’s a driver for organizational transformation. It brings a company whose training was mandatory and boring up to date. The training becomes a catalyst for change for the project team, the organization, and the field. What matters when learning is using the science to deliver better results beyond simple completion rates:

• Improve operations and production planning:

  The  application focuses their efforts on a few of the highest-value S&OP levers in order to review the current planning process, identify gaps in the planning infrastructure and analytically understand demand and supply variability.

• Determine the right performance level:

  With hundreds of training applications in the market, the manufacturer of major engines, transformers and transportation infrastructure needed a proper method to predict and assess their training. Using an instructional efficiency analysis formula (E=[R-P]/√2), the teams defined appropriate difficulty(R) and performance (P) against non-immersive versus VR training  on the most complex training modules.

• Optimize the supply chain for perfect service delivery:

  In working with dozens of software teams, it is the training development group that owns the monitoring diagnostics to determine the stressors that affected sales and service levels the target learner needed to reach. I get teams focused on resolving issues related to higher-than-normal service-tickets and lead times, by including all three loops the entire supply chain and this leads to expedited trained personnel reaching customers faster.