Category: Developing Skills

“The best employers have the best employees.” Years after COVID-19, companies in all sectors, including logistics, are still struggling to hire (or re-hire) employees. Indeed, according to [1]: While the statistics themselves are a bit fuzzy, by some industry estimates, the typical turnover rate for warehousing is around 37%. This (...)

Operating heavy equipment typically requires the coordinated use of both hands and feet to move levers, joysticks, steering wheels, and pedals. For that reason, simulated work that “mimics” real work can truly help develop the skills required to operate heavy equipment [links to the blog categories “Simulation for Training” and (...)

The world is full of “work” that requires interaction between two people, and I’ll use tennis as a simple example. Playing tennis requires two people, but you learn to play tennis by yourself, at least at the start, with coaching help: how to hold the racket properly, how to hit (...)

Whether you like it or not, your thoughts affect your actions.  That’s why how you feel about what you do counts. And the only way to gain confidence is practice: the more you do, the more you can do. And the more you can do, the more you do. The fact is, you can only be skilled when (...)

The simulation of real-world work starts with how things look. That’s simulation graphics. For example, the various parts of the simulated lift truck should have the right shapes and sizes, in the right proportions. And when the (simulated) sun shines, it should cast (simulated) shadows that look like real ones. (...)

A recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek [1] noted that employers are increasingly working with their local high schools to develop new programs that combine classroom learning with on-the-job training. The objective: grow your own skilled workers. “With almost two openings for every person looking for work, US companies are increasingly (...)

I didn’t know what to say. The Director of a heavy equipment operator training school had called to talk about his new (Simlog) simulators, and asked me the following question: “What’s the #1 way they’re helping my students?” The #1 way? Well, simulation can improve operator training in so many (...)

When developing skills, how you train is just as important as what you practice. And often overlooked is timing, especially for how long you should practice “in one shot”, what kind of a “break” should you take between training “sessions”, when is the best time to train during the day (...)

Organisations that own and operate heavy equipment are always looking for new operators. And to do that, they are primarily targeting: current employees who are now doing other kinds of work, to grow their own people with work experience in other fields, including military veterans [1]. In both cases, people (...)

Typical operator training programs combine classroom-based instruction with real-world seat-time but the results are often discouraging, because there are three kinds of uncertainty. Are you choosing the right people to train? Are your trainees learning properly? Are your new operators working well enough? We can summarize the current arrangement in (...)