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High-quality training is crucial for today’s manufacturing industry. The skills gap presents an ongoing challenge, and the ability to bring workers up to speed on new technology and processes quickly is one of the most important tools manufacturers have for bridging it. That’s why so many manufacturers are on the hunt for an LMS—these solutions offer a way to streamline learning, make it more effective, and engage employees in a way that helps you retain talented resources.
But not every LMS is suited to the unique needs of the manufacturing industry. Manufacturing is a broad landscape, covering wide-ranging specialties in materials, process, and product. Without an LMS that fits your business, you run the risk of ending up with one more service in your technology ecosystem that promised solutions but didn’t deliver.
The key to choosing the right LMS for your manufacturing business is to think about what, how, and where your employees are going to spend time learning. Your LMS should provide content that addresses your specific technical tools without bloat. It should target your employees’ learning goals and needs precisely, and not waste time on things they already know. And it should travel with your workers to the places where they need it most. Here’s what to consider as you weigh your LMS options.
The manufacturing industry relies on a range of specific tools to design, produce, and test its output. One of the chief causes of the skills gap is that these tools are becoming increasingly technical, with experienced workers either not skilled in their use or retiring from the workforce, while new workers may not have had the level of instruction that they need to hit the ground running in your shop.
The right LMS for a manufacturing company will include content that covers the tools and skills your workers need. In the case of newer workers to the manufacturing industry, that might look like detailed instruction in your company’s particular AutoCAD requirements. It could also be a focus on your business’s specific workflows and processes, or required certifications for the industry you serve.
But a deep library is no help if you can’t find the courses you need. Customizability is also crucial, so you can create personalized learning paths for your employees that avoid bogging them down with information they already know. You need to be able to adjust your training materials to reflect the reality of your company’s daily work, incorporating the procedures and tools that your workers will encounter when they’re putting their training into practice.
Finally, if your business is under strict compliance requirements—part of the defense industry, for example, or an aviation supplier—an LMS should offer documentation and auditing tools. That way, you can certify that your employees have completed any required trainings. Even without the tight tolerances of defense or public safety regulations, strong documentation tools within an LMS let you formalize your standard operating procedures and show that your employees have been trained on them.
A good LMS will save time by targeting the skills your workforce needs most and addressing them directly. One of the simplest ways to accomplish that is with skill assessments.
Before hiring, skill assessments can help you to both identify your likeliest candidates, and also make sure they get off on the right foot with the training they need to be successful in your organization. Skill assessments connected to an LMS can automatically personalize learning paths for your workers, meaning new hires are already set up with access to their most important courses.
One of employees’ and businesses’ biggest hurdles in implementing training programs is a lack of time. It’s difficult for current employees to find the hours to spare on in-person classes, or rehashes of material that they are already comfortable with. Skill assessments are a quick and accessible way to help workers personalize their desired courses so that they aren’t losing time retreading familiar subjects.
Manufacturing workers do their work in a huge variety of scenarios. It makes sense that they would do their learning there, too. If workers are learning to operate a new piece of machinery, having hands-on access to the machine itself while they learn will help cement the new information.
For that, your LMS needs to be lightweight and accessible, while being powerful enough to handle your content needs. A web-based solution can be accessed anywhere you have an internet connection, including the shop floor. And an LMS isn’t only for training courses, either—it can be a repository of knowledge that workers can search in real time, letting them look up a procedure or reference a manual exactly when they need it most.
This kind of LMS empowers your employees to be more self-sufficient, and reduces bottlenecks due to training or communication delays. Your employees have a single source of truth where they know they can find the most up-to-date and accurate information about your business’s operations, which gives them the confidence to take the initiative in their roles.
Developed by engineers to address the needs of the architecture, engineering, construction, and manufacturing industries, Pinnacle Series has the features to make it a perfect fit for your manufacturing business. Our content library covers the leading manufacturing software titles—like AutoCAD, Inventor, and SOLIDWORKS—in depth, and offers the customizability to design a learning experience around your unique workforce.
Take advantage of Eagle Point’s expertise as you evaluate your LMS options. To learn more about what Pinnacle Series LMS can do for your manufacturing business, request a demo today.
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