Standardized training: move from pockets of excellence to operational excellence

Posted: February 5, 2020

How do you start a pump? Do you partially open the discharge valve before starting the driver, or do you open it fully? Ask two different operators and you are likely to get two different answers. Ask one engineer and you’ll get two more.

Starting a pump is just one of many tasks completed on a regular basis. How do you make sure that every worker uses the same procedure and best method consistently? How do you eliminate the risk of two employees receiving different instructions when we all have our own way of doing things? And does anyone understand why that operating procedure is standard?

Standardized training ensures consistent quality across the organization. You can avoid ending up with divergent practices at similar facilities. Staff in one location should be trained on the same material and in the same way as staff in another location, especially regarding matters of company standard operating procedures and best practices. Companies should synchronize training across multiple sites from a central hub, without having to rely on a variety of different instructors to deliver courses. Standardization lets every site benefit from hard won organizational knowledge.

Sounds good, right? But how do you accomplish this with highly technical training, possibly requiring specialized software, hardware or subject matter experts? And how do you ensure standardized training will actually be adopted, not just tolerated as one more initiative airdropped from headquarters?

As is often the case, the technical problem is easier to solve than the human one. AVEVA’s cloud technology removes the barriers to deploying advanced tools like operator training simulators and immersive virtual reality training environments. Expert knowledge from any location can be captured and transformed into fully online courses that cover step-by-step instructions on how to execute procedures and troubleshoot abnormal situations, all combined with simulator practice and assessments. Generic simulation-based learning can be particularly useful in this case, as the courses are broad enough to work everywhere but detailed enough to add value. AVEVA Process Competency Training addresses this need with ready-made, quick to implement solutions, that combine the flexibility of cloud deployment with subscription-based pricing.

The human challenge of adoption is more complex. Every site has its own culture and every operator has their own skills, experiences and expectations. Any widely deployed training program needs to account for this. While the operating procedure may be standard, the learning process is unique. AVEVA Unified Learning provides a platform so operators can use the right tool at the right time in a well-designed framework. Instead of isolated, site-based training courses, learning can now happen on the cloud all the time everywhere in a true scalable enterprise-level framework that standardizes performance.

Are you ready to transform learning? Read our Training for Tomorrow Digital Document to see how AVEVA helps companies address both the human and technical aspects of learning.