Supervisor skill formation in Taiwan’s automated factories

Abstract

Automation is one of the ways in which enterprises can lower production costs and improve their quality. Since automation has a major impact on the nature of work and jobs, it demands new skills from supervisors. The major purpose of the study outlined here was to attempt to discover those approaches which are most effective in updating and changing supervisor skill formation. Questionnaires, covering working attitude, professional skills, interpersonal skills, administrative skills and mental skills, were sent to 1,000 members of Taiwan Electrical and Electronics Manufacturing Association. The results suggest that self‐development is most effective in fostering working attitudes, interpersonal skills and mental skills, while off‐job training outperforms self‐development and on‐job training in developing professional skills and administrative skills. Details more specific methods for effective supervisor skill formation, which show that supervisors can be educated to meet the requirements of an automated working environment.