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Articles - Publication Date 1.15.2001
Click and Learn
E-learning is changing how manufacturers transfer knowledge to employees and customers.
By Michael A. Verespej
You need to train more than 1,000 managers in how to use a new performance-management system.
Done conventionally, the logistics and costs are next to impossible. Experts say that more than 50 at a training session is both unwieldy and ineffective. Consequently, to train that many managers you would have to reserve a corporate meeting room more than 20 times or rent expensive meeting space. You also would need to accommodate the schedules of the trainer and your managers -- many of whom must fly in and spend a night or two in a hotel. There's also the matter of lost productivity while managers are in training.
But aviation-electronics systems manufacturer Rockwell Collins Inc., a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, division of Rockwell International Corp., avoided all that hassle by training 1,000-plus managers with a 26-minute online tutorial. The task was accomplished in two weeks.
Companies are rapidly moving to e-learning because of the fast pace of change in today's information-driven economy. "E-learning addresses the issues -- shorter product life cycle, increasing skills gaps, rapid technology changes that require ongoing learning, and increasing product complexity -- that face business today," says Paul Jeffries, president and CEO, LogicBay Corp., a Minneapolis company that provides e-learning services. "With faster product cycles and slamming market windows, it is imperative that manufacturers quickly and efficiently train the people who can impact the sales, service, and use of their product."
What types of corporate training seem best suited for e-learning? Three areas seem to be emerging: new-hire training, new-product information, and situations where knowledge needs to be transferred to a large group of people or to a group of people who are geographically dispersed.
IBM Corp., for example, has moved online virtually all the content of the first three phases of management training for its first-line managers. This eliminates the need to send them to off-site locations over the course of a training period that formerly stretched out over six months.
For new-product introductions, e-learning obviates the need to fly in sales reps and distributors or to send experts across the country in a whirlwind tour that leaves them exhausted and the company unable to tap their expertise for an extended period of time. That's especially critical to organizations such as Cisco Systems Inc., San Jose, which must train over 5,000 salespeople and account managers worldwide on a continuing basis for hundreds of new products annually.
At Intel Corp., Santa Clara, Calif., where learning is decentralized by business unit, the Technology and Manufacturing Group that supports factory training intends to move 80% of that learning online within three years. In addition, there is a push throughout the organization to move "anything that is dull and deadly in a classroom lecture to electronic learning," says Ron Dickson, training benchmark manager.
These e-learning approaches -- live Webcasts, tapes of live Webcasts, Web-based self-paced tutorials, and Web-based instructor-led learning, as well as CD-ROM instruction -- are changing the way companies transfer knowledge and information to employees and customers.
"Classroom training is a 19th-century artifact -- if not an artifact of the medieval times," says former U.S. Dept. of Labor Secretary Robert Reich. "It tends not to be tailored to the needs of a particular individual. With e-learning, you can go at your own pace and do training when you need it and when it's convenient for you."
E-learning is "best used for a distributed workforce or when you are involving supply chain partners" where there is a need to get the information out rapidly and to deliver a consistent message, says Chris Reed, vice president, corporate strategy, Centra Software Inc., Lexington, Mass., which helps companies conduct live Internet Webcasts.
Intel's Dickson points out another advantage: "We<
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