Effectivity of Learning Factories to convey problem solving competencies

Abstract

The ability to solve problems in a structured way is an essential competence of people in a factory, from the shopfloor operator to the management level. This is already the case for established lean management approaches and is gaining relevance with the increasing complexity of production systems through progressive automation and digitisation. As learning factories have shown to be an effective approach for learning and teaching production-related topics in a practical manner, a learning module for the A3 problem solving methodology was implemented at an industrial learning factory. In order to continuously improve the learning and teaching productivity, the effectiveness of different approaches to convey the A3 methodology was investigated with over 100 participants. The results show that while the setting of learning factories can be used in a beneficial way for learning the A3 methodology, additional advantages regarding learning as well as process performance can be generated by including real und current content from the learner‘s specific workplaces.