Have you ever considered training your supervisors? If problems like low profit, employee apathy, poor quality, excessive labour turnover or absenteeism, unionization threats, restricted output and resistance to change sound familiar to you, it’s high time you did. Training of supervisors however cannot be done using cognitive or theoretical methods keeping in view their educational qualifications. It has to be done with the aid of something interactive and practical which is easier for them to follow.
“Let’s Make You Super Wiser”, a game-based supervisor training module focusing on the roles and responsibilities of a supervisor has been developed by Neelima Prasher and Priti Agarwal, both former students of Department of Fashion Technology NIFT, New Delhi under the guidance of Prof. Prabir Jana from NIFT and in collaboration with Contact Communications (Industry mentor Shlok Hariramani), during their graduation research project. The following pages outline the main aspects of the training module.
The supervisor is one of the most important person in the entire garment manufacturing process, because it is he who manages the needle up and down, which keeps the organization black, but sadly it is the most neglected function in the garment industry. The traditional garment industry approach of promoting an operator to the position of supervisor is hardly appropriate in today’s competitive industry. Majority of the supervisors working in the industry have no professional education in garment manufacturing; their knowledge is based on their work experience only.
Improving supervisory practices is crucial to the success of India’s garment industry. In the face of increasing competition, the garment industry depends on the optimum utilization of the capabilities of its workforce. Improving labour-management relations and productivity is important, and training can make a difference between success and failure. Training of supervisors to make them understand what is expected of them and also their daily job responsibility therefore becomes very important. “Let’s Make You Super Wiser”, a game-based supervisor training module has been developed to address this issue.
Why Games?
Information-based techniques, such as lectures and conferences, are designed to impart large amounts of factual information to many people simultaneously, making them very efficient and cost-effective. However, because they are usually unidirectional, they are not suitable for learning procedures or skills; their main strength is in the dissemination of factual or background information.
Practice-based methods, such as games and simulations are designed to allow the learner to rehearse the material being learned, and receive feedback on his or her performance. These methods are best suited for learning interpersonal skills, complicated procedures, or the use of tools or equipments. Because of the feedback and practice design, learning occurs more quickly and with better retention.
Similarly, the lecture-based methods are more suitable if the participants are comfortable with the aspect of classroom learning. The target audiences here – the supervisors – however are people who believe in learning practically as they have majorly learnt all they know by actually doing it. So it becomes necessary to design a training module for them which keep in mind the way of learning which is preferred by them.
Also the training module developed drives its inspiration from Confucius’ principle…
“Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I’ll remember. Involve me and I’ll understand”.
Therefore, a supervisory training module has been developed based on games to ensure that basic education level does not hinder while imparting training and efficacy is maximum. The training module comprises of a presentation which uses lots of visuals and videos and less of text, games, interesting discussion points and feedback forms to be filled by the supervisors. The entire module is in Hindi for easy understanding of supervisors (in the Delhi-NCR region). The module has 12 games and the training duration is 2 hours spanning over 2 days.
How the Games were Developed?
A lot of research and effort was involved in the development of games for the training module. Initially, various sources for training/learning games were surveyed which included reading management books, literature on learning games for children, etc. The sources of information included websites, ebooks, book previews and library visits to IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Central Library and AADI (Action for Ability Development and Inclusion) School Library. Also an institute visit was undertaken to Rural Development and Self Employment Training Institute to practically see how the games were being used for training. Some games were selected after this research and some games were developed by the students on their own. The games shortlisted through various sources were adapted to suit the training needs. The final games were pilot tested at different companies and they were fine tuned. The improvised games were documented as a part of the module.
Skills/Roles Addressed by the Games
The games developed in the training module cover various roles of supervisors and the role each particular game discusses about has been summarized in Table 1. The skill category to which the particular role belongs has also been mentioned.
Table 1: Training module for supervisors | |||
SKILL CATEGORY | ROLE | NAME OF GAME | GAME FOCUS |
Technical skills | Measuring work and setting target | Boat making exercise | Target setting |
Line balancing | Balanced! | Line balancing concept | |
Instructing operators and giving orders | Training the operators Braiding! | Instruction/ Training Instruction method | |
Management skills | Team building and role definition in the workforce | Deck them! | Working together |
Jigsaw team building | Working together | ||
Dealing with excuses, especially “That’s not my job” syndrome | Figure it out | Working with onus | |
Instructing operators and giving orders | A read and do Test | Right communi-cation | |
Natural skills | Knowing operator skill matrix | Know them! | Know operator skills |
Introducing and orienting new employees | Introductions | Induction | |
Making sure that no preferential treatment is given to any employee | Not fair! | Biasness | |
Quality checking/Inspection | Arrange the shades | Shade matching |
The games developed are for the apparel industry supervisors involved with the cutting, sewing as well as the finishing departments. These games can be used for training of all these categories of supervisors. However, there are two games which may not be particularly useful for training cutting supervisors. These are ‘Balanced’ and ‘Figure it out’ because the former demonstrates the concept of line balancing which is not very essential for the cutting supervisors to know and the latter involves the knowledge of sewing defects which cutting supervisors may be apprehensive about.
Although all the games have a primary role that they explain, some games may be used to explain more than one role. For example: ‘Know them’ is primarily to demonstrate the importance of his operator skill matrix. It may however be used to demonstrate that newer and more effective methods must be sought for doing a certain task.
GAME 1. KNOW THEM!
Objective: To make the supervisors understand the importance of knowing their operator’s skills and abilities (Operator skill matrix).
One person is called upon at random to play the game. The person has to write a word exactly as given (Diagram 1) with each alphabet in the same colour as shown.
Scenario 1: The participant is given 5 pens all of which look identical, i.e. the colours of their ink are not apparent by looking at them. The player needs to check it by writing with each one of them and then write the right letter in right colour. The time taken by the player to complete the task is noted.
Result: While playing the game, it is found that since all the pens appear to be same, it becomes difficult to choose the right pen, and the player wastes a lot of time checking the colour of the pen before actually writing the letter.
Scenario 2: Now the participant is again given these 5 pens but the colours of their ink are apparent by looking at them. The participant is now asked to repeat the task. Time taken by the player in this case is also noted.
Result: While playing the game in the second scenario, it is found that task of checking the colour of the pen is eliminated as the refill inside the pen is of the same colour as the body of the pen.
Conclusion: If results of scenario 1 and scenario 2 are seen, we find that the task is completed faster when we are aware of the colour of the pens. Similarly, it is extremely important for the supervisors to know their operator’s skills and abilities so that when line setting is done for a new style, each operator is assigned a task which he/she is capable of performing successfully.
GAME 2. BALANCED!
Objective: To make the participants understand the importance of line balancing in improving production.
In this game, two people are called at random to play the game. The task of one person is to write the words as shown in Diagram 2 on the paper sheet provided and the second person has to fold the paper sheet as shown in Diagram 3.
Scenario 1: Two people are put to do the jobs. One person writes in the prescribed format (as shown in Diagram 2) and the other person simply folds the page (as shown in Diagram 3) on which the writing has been done. The output (number of folded pages) in this case is noted
within 30 seconds.
Result: The person doing the folding job stands idle for some of the time as the other person writes.
Scenario 2: One more person is called up for the game and is asked to write in the format. The output in this case is also noted in the same time period.
Result: The person doing the folding has more work now when compared to the previous scenario and he is occupied with work for a greater percentage of time. Also, the production (number of folded pieces) is more in this case.
Conclusion: If the results of scenario 1 and scenario 2 are seen, we observe that the task of writing takes up more time when compared to folding the page. So when two people are engaged in doing the task of writing, the folding operator is also engaged in his task for more amount of time as compared to the previous case and also the output in this case increases. Therefore this activity demonstrates the importance of line balancing as to how it increases production and ensures optimum labour utilization.
GAME 3. TRAINING THE OPERATORS
Objective: To make the participants understand the importance of operator training.
Here, two people are called at random to play the game. Each of them is given a puzzle board and puzzle pieces to complete the puzzle as shown in Diagram 4.
Scenario 1: The first participant is given the puzzle pieces and the puzzle board and is asked to arrange the puzzle pieces in the desired shape on the puzzle board. This participant is only told that the numbered faces of the puzzle pieces should face up and nothing else. The time taken to do this is noted.
Result: The participant is confused and has no idea where to start. He keeps placing the pieces at random and tries to solve the puzzle. Sometimes he might not even be able to solve it. (In such cases, stop him after giving considerable time).
Scenario 2: The second participant is given instructions on where the various coloured pieces fit in. He is told two main things – that numbering on the pieces goes from top to bottom; and that once the numbers are arranged, the pieces get automatically fitted in correct position. In other words, if the numbers appear upside down, the person is placing the pieces incorrectly. For this purpose, he is shown the above illustration. The time taken to complete the task now is noted.
Result: The participant is more confident as he knows what exactly is to be done and starts the job as soon as he is handed the pieces.
Conclusion: On analyzing scenario 1 and scenario 2, it is seen that instructions are important. It is very important for supervisors to train their operators to get better results because only when the operators know what exactly is to be done and how it is to be done, will they be able to perform, giving higher output.