Preparing the next generation of leaders

By Ben SoSne and denniS R eBelo

PITTSFIELD

— The development of the future leaders of the Berkshire high tech economy has begun.

It’s taking place right now at the Berkshire Innovation Center’s new manufacturing academy.

Late last year the BIC, in partnership with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce to launch the BIC Manufacturing Academy, which is an industry-led training collaboratively learning institute. The academy is designed to address persistent challenges facing the manufacturing economy in the Berkshires through ongoing education, training, and technology assistance.

In creating the academy, we identified three foundational issues that have continued to serve as our north stars. First, our diverse regional firms — manufacturers of plastics, armored vehicles and clear technologies and life science firms — are not only facing a shortage of workers, but their teams are aging, which means more of their key people are retiring. This means that less experienced employees will likely be accelerated into supervisor roles quicker than they traditionally have been. So there is a very real need to support the growth of these younger employees.

Second, many firms have been reluctant or slow to implement new technologies into their operations. Bringing on new technologies is key to making firms more productive and more competitive and can open them up to new lines of business, but these firms need support as they assess and ultimately implement these new technologies.

Third, human skills and engagement of frontline workers matters now more than ever. By engaging in training to reduce cognitive load for employees, lower their frustration by enhancing their problem-solving and promote their communications skills across audiences, the frontline workers’ insights will be heard and positively affect how the whole firm reacts, evolves and performs.

The academy supports the growth and development of the future leaders of our firms, and helps these firms explore new technological solutions, through a comprehensive core training program as well as a curated series of technology workshops. The core training program was developed after countless hours of interviews, meetings and learning from a diverse range of industry partners. It is called Systems Thinking for the Application of Technologies, or STAT. The STAT program answers two key industry needs: developing employee troubleshooting and systems thinking and enhancing human skills. It is a cornerstone to our work.

The STAT Program is a dynamic 24-week initiative that is broken into three distinct phases. Each phase is six-weeks long, with two-week remote learning breaks scheduled between them. We are calling our very first group of students Cohort #001 to mark the significance of the program. The well-known worldwide management procedure Total Quality Control, now known as Total Quality Management, was devised in Pittsfield by late brothers Armand and Donald Feigenbaum in the 1960’s through their company General Systems. Corp.

Given the influence the processes devised by the Feigenbaum brothers have had on management procedures across the globe, perhaps it would be better to refer to the academy’s work as the rebirth or reclaiming of Pittsfield and the Berkshires as a key place in this new world of advanced manufacturing.

Classes for the STAT Program are held twice a week and offer manufacturing technicians a systematic view and novel approach to troubleshooting in a manufacturing setting. Students who complete this program will develop mastery in the basics of systems thinking, a rich understanding of the role of data analytics, and a framework for better problem solving. At key points in the journey, they will also be introduced to new technologies that may change how their companies produce goods and do business.

The three phases of the STAT Program have been carefully designed to support and reinforce the learning process. Problem solving is approached using a standalone version of the Six-Sigma inspired “DMAIC” framework that consists of five components: Define, Measure,

Analyze, Improve, and Control. This data-driven and sequenced improvement approach is a cycle used to accelerate problem solving to improve varied processes, whatever the type of work or industry might be.

Applying Procedures

Students who complete the training will be able to apply these five perspectives to their manufacturing environments to diagnose, analyze, and solve problems of their own. That’s when the learning is converted to real world application. They will learn to define the work problem that needs to be solved, measure the specification of their current work problem using selected principles and practices from the program, analyze the measured data and explore approaches to solve the problem, then engage in improving the work process by implementing the solution(s) to the problem. Over time, they can control the change in order to ensure the work process will be performed consistently. Students will be in constant conversation with their firms and supported by industry instructors and professional coaches.

The first phase focuses on the principles of DMAIC as a framing tool that illustrates and engages students in ways to enhance their troubleshooting and their problem-solving skills to more effectively approach any problem, from fixing a coffee machine to something far more complex. It is an interactive seminar with a lot of thoughtful exchange, really prompting students to think about their own lives and their work roles.

In the second phase, the students apply the framing tools that they learned from the first phase. This will include both a hands-on learning component and a computer simulation. The hands-on learning will involve studying and interacting with a micro-manufacturing wind turbine plant located within the BIC which will serve as a testing ground to practice problem-based learning. Through varied problems, students will understand measurement, process mapping, and other tools that hang off the DMAIC framework. Complementing the hands-on learning will be a digital twin, a computer simulation that will allow students to tweak the types of technology that could be deployed in a production line as the process is “leaned out,” controlled, improved, and sustained.

In the third and final phase of the program, students will move from this micro-manufacturing simulation and rethink where they sit within their roles, their group, and their firm and begin to formulate a way to “make their learning count” in their companies. With support from a supervisor in their firm, the students will identify a real-life problem, or opportunity, that they can troubleshoot, and problem solve. Here is where they will be paired with coaches to apply the DMAIC framework to assess actual “pain points” within their firms and propose solutions that will make their firms more productive, efficient, and competitive.

This first cohort includes 14 students from nine regional firms, who were all identified and nominated by their organization’s leadership team. They include Rachel Birch and Michelle Jones from Boyd Biomedical; Robert Smith from Electro Magnetic Applications; Padraic Sullivan and Jason Hover from Spectrum Plastics

Group; Jordan Callahan from Pro Workforce Performance, Inc.; Ricky Reynolds and Matt McInerney from Interprint, Inc., DJ Tanner and Matt Roccabruna from General Dynamics Mission Systems; Garrit Baker from Mativ, formerly Neenah Technical Paper; Mike Decensi and Kenny Loynes from Unistress Corp.; and Luis Ortiz from Sinicon Plastics.

BMA’s primary instructor is Patrick Becker, a proven mentor-teacher from General Dynamics Mission Systems. He will lead the cohort through the technical learning section of this interactive and application-oriented experience. Timothy Butterworth will be playing a pivotal role in the Phase II micro-manufacturing plant simulation section of the experience by not only building the plant but engaging in the problem-based learning approach to this phase with MIT support personnel.

This cohort is historic, and not just because it is the first group to participate in this innovative and transformational educational program. It’s because the program we designed is rooted fundamentally in Total Quality Thinking. That process was born in Pittsfield on the very ground the BIC was built. It is now being included in how our Berkshire regional manufacturing firms most valuable asset, their human capital, can receive a new way of thinking, learning and doing their work. It comes at a time when this matters the most.