TOCICO

In an increasingly complex world, the ability of companies to adapt their skills is crucial for their survival and for the personal growth of their employees. The Demand Driven Skills Model (DDSM) allows companies to visually detect the missing skills and to quickly and systemically adapt in order to meet the challenges of a demand driven business. Much has been written about how to manage stock, time and resource capacity with a demand driven approach, but what about the people and skills that it takes to maintain and sustain a Demand Driven Adaptive Enterprise? Missing skills can slow down or even stop the flow, thus turning into a bottleneck. This presentation introduces the Demand Driven Skills Model (DDSM), which allows to decide where to locate and how to size skill buffers depending on priorities in order to better protect the flow in all departments of a company. Then, further innovations to implement a competitive strategy can be identified, prioritized and translated into requirements for the evolution of skills and new jobs. The DDSM includes 5 components: (1) position current skills and skill holes, (2) develop internal trainers able to maintain continuous improvement, (3) evaluate training priorities to fill skill holes when facing variability of demand, (4) introduce innovation, and (5) pull and adapt skills to support the strategy. Key elements are: - The four-level Multiskills Matrix (Student, Operational, Expert, Trainer) showing for each skill respectively 1, 2, 3 or 4 green squares for each employee performing this skill - A team of internal trainers collaborating with management - A color legend allowing to evaluate the risk for flow and to support innovations - The Competency Competitivity Plan describing the skills required to reach strategical targets over the next 3 years - Visual and continuous recognition of employees who expand their skills i.e. gaining new green squares The maturity of skills is analyzed along 3 types and 5 groups of processes: operational demand driven processes (Marketing-Sales & Supply Chain), supporting processes (Finance & HR) and a formalizing process (Total Quality). This analysis helps visualizing priorities for top management, e. g., hiring decisions or the allocation of financial resources to train employees in the strategic side of Sales & Operations Planning. During each Sales & Operations Planning cycle, top management can systematically update decisions regarding skills based on the evaluation of the priorities in these process groups. The DDSM is a proven visual, demand driven, systemic approach that contributes to managing the cultural change towards an adaptive and learning company. It can be applied in any size of flow focus business and type of industry.