Instructional Design to support Culture Change in Manufacturing

The processing division of this National Health Service Provider had recently embarked on a cultural transformation to become a ‘Lean Manufacturer’. The transformation involved establishing a refreshed mission and strategy, an organisational restructure and a wide scale cultural alignment initiative to build capabilities, behaviours and mindset of Senior and Front Line Managers. As part of the organisational redesign, a new role –‘Manufacturing Supervisor’, was created. With roles filled internally, the organisation identified the need to provide targeted, technical development to ensure that Supervisors were well positioned to lead their teams within a manufacturing model and continuous improvement culture.

Curve Group partnered with the OD Team to design and develop a 6 week blended learning program aimed to equip Supervisors with the knowledge, tools and skills to successfully adhere to a manufacturing production schedule whilst fostering a continuous improvement culture.

Key to the successful design of this program was:

1. Establishing a learning architecture for the 6 weeks to ensure learning was ‘just in time’ for participants, as they built understanding of their new role and the critical skills they needed to deliver it. This involved developing a ‘program on a page’ view of the week-by-week activities of the program, to socialise with stakeholders and ensure the right blend of delivery approaches to engage participant. Delivery mechanisms including face-to-face workshops, external courses, mentoring, self-paced learning, video conferences and technical ‘Deep Dive’sessions.
2. Leveraging an internal pool of subject matter experts to guide the technical content of the program. This included running SME Focus Sessions upfront to develop a Supervisor Capability Framework and to uncover content needs. SMEs played a critical role throughout the instructional design process by providing guidance on technical concepts, reviewing content and co-developing activities and case studies.
3. Equipping SMEs to deliver the program internally, across four regions. This required a specific degree of detail to prepare facilitator guides, program overviews, participants materials and content for easy and consistent deployment across the regions.

The capability program was delivered successful to all Manufacturing Supervisors over the defined 6 week period (concurrently across every region), with glowing feedback from both the participants and the facilitators. The organisation has since shared with us that as a result of their training, Supervisors’ understanding and application of new ways of working has exceeded all expectations. Through feeling supported and aligned to the cultural change, Supervisors have become champions of the new ‘lean’ system. With the ability to now translate the knowledge and skills acquired through the program into their new role, Supervisors are keen to share their learnings with their teams to help instil change.