Training Simulation’s #1 Secret

February 7th, 2022

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 ways. And as I continued to think, he gave me the answer:

“It slows people down.”

I just nodded my head. All of a sudden, I was 6 years old again in the dining room of my childhood house, learning to play the piano [1].

That’s where I first learned to develop a skill properly: begin with just the right hand, SLOWLY, to get every note right. Then use just the left hand, SLOWLY, to get every note right. Finally, put the two hands together, EVEN MORE SLOWLY, to get every note right.

After that, all you need to do is practice practice practice until every note right comes out QUICKLY. Suddenly, it’s Chopin!

Later, I abandoned the piano for the banjo but the advice remains the same [2]:

“When you practice slowly, you learn fast.”

Meanwhile, in the Real World

Sadly, this is exactly what people don’t do in the real world when learning to operate (real) heavy equipment. Instead, I’ll show you just enough to try to keep you safe, and then I’ll send you out to work. (Remember, time is money.)

It’s as if, as you continue to work, you’ll make fewer mistakes. Or by analogy, all the wrong notes at the piano will (eventually) become the right ones. Well … no.

The fact is, doing the wrong things over and over again will never make them right. And “practicing your mistakes” will just create bad habits to be “un-learned”, and that’s much harder than learning good habits in the first place.

Remember: when new operators take the controls of real heavy equipment, they make mistakes. And those mistakes can lead to accidents. And those accidents can damage equipment, or injure people (or worse).

Training with simulation is different. In particular, by “measuring your simulated work comprehensively, you are learning to be extra careful. Indeed, you are learning by being extra careful. And that means you are practicising SLOWLY (to learn fast).

Two Examples

Consider, for example, an excavator loading a truck. In the real world, it’s easy enough to measure “cycle time” but in the simulated world, we also measure the falling distance when material leaves the bucket to tumble into the truck box. And by assigning a target value to that falling distance, new operators learn to keep the bucket just high enough to clear the sideboard to dump. This, of course, takes practice but once learned, you reduce cycle time, and so improve productivity.

Now consider a forklift picking up a palletized load. In the real world, again you can measure time, but in the simulated world we also measure the orientation error of the forks. Again, by assigning a target value to that orientation error, new operators learn to pick up palletized loads with the forks perpendicular, to be able to move around more safely and especially more quickly after pickup.

Practising Slowly means Learning Fast

OK, so practising slowly is key.

And doing that at the simulator, where mistakes have no (real world) consequences and where best practices are “enforced” by measuring what you are doing comprehensively, means that when you “graduate” to the real world (after doing well enough in the simulated world), you will do better:

You will work more safely, and that will reduce the wear-and-tear on your equipment.
You will work more productively, thanks to the good habits that were so carefully (i.e., slowly) acquired at the training simulator.

Now who wouldn’t want that?

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