RESPECT FOR THE CREATOR

Proverbs 14:12 (KJV) There is a way which seemeth right unto a man,

but the end thereof are the ways of death.

 

RESPECT FOR THE CREATOR, SOVEREIGN GOD

 

   Exo 20:7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

 

Americans are facing the total disruptive government as we approach 2020 Presidential Election. It is not as much of a concern about the candidates, as it is with the process. As WE THE PEOPLE, we have let a runaway culture that is steeped in self-indulgence fueled by the few that seek reparation for centuries of history, set our standards.

 

Yet we pray to God and ask for help when we have turned our back on his standards. We listen to world news and declare that there is nothing one person can do, but read Isaiah 18. Isaiah said I am going to sit at the gate and turn back the enemy.

 

With the coronavirus pandemic, there is no consensus on how votes should be cast, or counted. More crucial, we have already changed our school systems (totally altering socialization), raising new threats of obesity and mental health disorders.

 

Jesus said, “Fear not …”, yet the church shelters in and resorts to the web and social media to deliver its message. At the same time, many who call themselves Christian join outsiders to march in our streets protesting and looting.

 

Worse then that these rebellious mobs are virtually destroying America’s history; both that of the church, and their own. Now where will you take your grandchildren and share what sacrifices were made to bring us to our present status?

 

For those that are so vocal about the inequities of what identifies as slavery, what is the difference with what we call employment, or indebtedness, a bad marriage, or denominational error, bullying, abuse, and on and on. Think about this, all these things go on today with the police presence. What will it be like if these mobs succeed in forcing the elimination of the police?

 

When was the last time the church reviewed the constitution and bylaws of the United States as a means of encouraging respect for God-directed leadership? You may not like the president, or a city mayor, or a judge, or a senator, or a representative, but they are God-directed officers of government. Whether you respect the person or not, we are commanded to respect each of the offices, and abide by rules and regulations that are positioned for the good of the whole.

 

Read the following Article 1 of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution and tell me what in these few words authorize violence, rebellion, looting, burning, destroying monuments, defacing public buildings, damaging business property and killing business owners.

Article [I] (Amendment 1 - Freedom of expression and religion) ¹³

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

None of these actions can reasonably be identified as peaceful, or as a petition. This is anarchy, and unfortunately, it is being directed in our city by people from out of state. They are not even citizens of our community.

 

These outsiders are taking advantage of the unrest of the locals that are so tired of being quarantined that they will chase anything that seems to be exciting. Most of the participants, night after night have no clue what the true focus of the mob activity truly is.

 

With the coronavirus pandemic, there is no consensus on how votes should be cast, or counted. More crucial, we have already changed our school systems (totally altering socialization), raising new threats of obesity and mental health disorders.

 

Frustration is fueled through growing claims that parents are not capable, or qualified to home school, or deal with the growing unrest among the homebound student population across the nation.

 

This new normal is imposing unbelievable sacrifice and inconvenience on virtually every home in the land. Suicides are up, drug and alcohol abuse are rampant, and our society is losing hope, and engaging in disruptive looting, rioting, and reacting irresponsibly.

 

As owners and managers of businesses, you are enduring disruptive influences on every hand, finance, material, personnel, and governmental intrusion. I share this foundational fact with you to encourage you and inform you that there is a source of hope, one greater than all our problems: God is still in Control. Romans 8:28 (KJV).

 

Be blessed … Mel

THE “POWER” OF “PROGRESSIVE REVELATION”. Part 3 of a series

THE “POWER” OF “PROGRESSIVE REVELATION”. Part 3 of a series

Implementing a plan of action

First thing first

I do not want to offend you, or come across as being unnecessarily religious by recommending that the first item in an action plan needs to involve a look in the spiritual mirror, and the acknowledgment of who you are in the eyes of the creator. God is not a respecter of persons, so he esteems your value as being equal to mine, or anyone else that you might know or name.

The true question then is, “Who you are willing to become?”. That my friends initiate a process. You must first define where you are now. Not physically, or geographically, but spiritually. If you were to die before you have the opportunity to make any more plans, where would you spend the rest of your life?

That is a question that only you can answer, and that answer is based purely and singularly on the basis of how you deal with the question, “What will you do with Jesus?”

That is the most crucial question that you will ever have to deal with because it is the only question in your entire life that cannot be made by someone else. Others can advise you on this matter, they may plead with you, they may even badger and pressure you into making a decision. The fact of the matter is, you and you alone can make that decision. Every other decision you make for the rest of your life may be legitimately influenced by others.

I truly pray that you are willing to say at this point, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired of my current status, and with God’s help I want to change it”.

Let me assure you that is the right place to start. And, when you make that commitment, God will use His Spirit, His Word, and His People, to guide you.

The next step is to decide where your interests are.

The most effective and efficient means of determining what is available, and what interests you have, go to a computer or visit a library an ask for assistance visiting

https://www.onetonline.org/

If you visit this site near the top left of the home screen you will find the words FIND OCCUPATIONS. Near the bottom of that box is a window with the words BRIGHT OUTLOOK and a down arrow. Clicking on the down arrow opens a window with seven options.

Midway down the list, find the word INDUSTRY. Click on the INDUSTRY and it will move up into the original window. This time, click on the arrow to the right.

This opens a new window with ACCOMMODATION AND FOOD SERVICES and a GO box to the right. Click on GO, and go to work.

At this point, you will be viewing a list of Industrial occupations. To the left of the title is the Department of Labor code for that occupation. To the left of that is an indication of the percentage of those holding this credential hired.

Click on the drop arrow again and then sort down to MANUFACTURING, and hit GO. Select one of these or any other title that interests you.       

	17-3024.00	Electro-Mechanical Technicians		1,400
	49-9041.00	Industrial Machinery Mechanics		37,800

 5 of 9 displayed

·         Mechanical — Knowledge of machines and tools, including their designs, uses, repair, and maintenance.

·         Engineering and Technology — Knowledge of the practical application of engineering science and technology. This includes applying principles, techniques, procedures, and equipment to the design and production of various goods and services.

·         Production and Processing — Knowledge of raw materials, production processes, quality control, costs, and other techniques for maximizing the effective manufacture and distribution of goods.

·         English Language — Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.

·         Mathematics — Knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications.

The two titles above were selected to show the basic information available. The code on the left is the occupational sort code. The title is the occupational range, and the number on the right is the forecast for job needs in the next few years.

We clicked on the second title because of the projected need in the near future. The display following that is the “Knowledge Expectations” for that title. Study those topics and you will have a good grasp of what the training would perfect over the period of 4-years.

You can select any one of more than 50 titles in the manufacturing category. If you seek another industry, go back one step, and select another category.

If none of these interests you, the site offers the same type of information on 13,000 job titles.

Using Evidence-Based, Time-Proven resources

At this point, you are ready for coaching. From this point forward, you may want to rely heavily on the expertise of those than have gone before you, the industry calls them Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).

But the process involves

Assessment; but insist that any assessment is backed up by a curriculum that deals with every category of testing.

Gap analysis, to compare your needs to a target score, against a job, craft, trade standard that aligns with your interests.

Related instruction (RTI) – studies that the onet describe for the job title of your interests.

Standards-Based Work Experience (OJT) – to be arranged with an employer when you have mastered the schedule and remediated basic skill needs to qualify for employment.

AIMTRAIN IS HERE TO HELP. Till then, be blessed.  Mel

THE “POWER” OF “PROGRESSIVE REVELATION”. Part 2 of a series

THE “POWER” OF “PROGRESSIVE REVELATION”. Part 2 of a series

A PLAN OF ACTION

We closed our first offer with the suggestion of separating your workforce needs into five categories and groups your job titles into one of those categories providing a progression from entry-level to salary eligibility in your organization.

Please think of this exercise as a means of organizational enrichment, and as a do it yourself means of enhancing the skill levels of everyone on your personnel role now, or at any point in the future. We recently authored a series of books around the theme “If it is going to be, it is going to be up to me”. 

The past 30 years have proven that our educational system does not choose to prepare young or old for workplace performance skills. They convince students that they deserve positions, not jobs, and they are entitled to benefits, not wages based on their personal value add.

Do not think of this process as an apprenticeship yet, because no one has journey-level personnel in sufficient numbers to properly evaluate performance compliance with national standards. Think about these categories as being pay-for-skill modules in a progressive developmental program. 

Consider what you would normally pay a Temp Agency for manpower, and consider paying that to the candidate for direct employment into your company. That benefits the employee with 15 to 25% better income than working with the temp and gives them a 90-day head start on benefits.

Determine 5 or 6 levels of pay, between your starting rate and the rate you would pay salaried Supervisors, Engineering technicians, Quality technicians, etc. Ideally, you will be able to agree on a differential of 10 to 15 dollars an hour. Divide that by 6 levels and then divide each level by 2. 

That would mean that each candidate going from entry-level to salary eligible would be on a program that would assure them of a dollar or a dollar and a half an hour increase every six months for five or six-years; as long as they completed the prescribed studies, and performed satisfactorily, with a compliant attitude, and proved a willingness to be a change agent for continuous improvement.

OUR QUALIFICATIONS TO SERVE YOU AS A CONSULTATIVE PARTNER

Our principle graduated in 1957 from a 5-year co-operative education, with a bachelor’s in Industrial Engineering, and a minor in Mechanical Engineering. Upon graduation, he assumed a position as a maintenance supervisor in a major automotive foundry, supervising 32 tradesmen spread over 9 trade classifications.

In the late 50s, America was selling everything they could produce, and the perception of foundry work made it difficult to find employees. The company operated its own proprietary trade school and offered more than 25 career pursuits by means of apprenticeships. Given the opportunity to assist the trade school in the development of curriculum, we were able to convince them to build specialty equipment for the foundry, as part of their apprenticeship work experience.

Educationally trained as an Engineer, but chose to pursue the more meaningful skill training initiatives (working with human resources rather than materials) he planted seeds that have germinated, and have motivated him through more than 65 years of task and job performance skill transfer training.

OUR MEANS OF FACILITATING PROGRESSIVE MASTERY

Performance mastery in any pursuit involves Related Training Instruction (RTI) coordinated with On the Job work experience (OJT) in a ratio between 8:1 hours of OJT to every hour of RTI, and 12:1, depending on the complexity of the trade pursuit.

Regarding RTI … There are at least five major providers of Web-delivered skill studies that offer a broad array of content focusing on a category we call Reliability Centered Manufacturing Process Technician. The irony is that they think they are competitors but in reality, they blend to provide a natural multi-level progression without obvious redundancy.

Being an independent consultant and integrating these to provide the five levels of progressive mastery, we can do what they choose not to do. All of them offer one-year accessibility to a library of courses. So, rather than contracting for the entire library of one vendor for five levels of the study, we contract with each vendor for one year and build through progressive enlightenment (content mastery).

There are many benefits to web-based RTI, but the greatest of these is the inability of any serious student to fail to master the skills taught. Unlike traditional education, failure on the first try means waiting a semester, or even a year until the next class offer. With web-based studies, the student can retry their pre-tests, study, and post-test the next day. And they keep restudying until they achieve the target score.

Regarding OJT … That is up to you and your staff. By integrating the RTI with your processes and your personnel, we are training in real-time, doing real work, on real products, with real performance objectives. We establish all performance objectives in accordance with the US Department of Labor’s – Occupational Network (O-Net), and 65-year history with the Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training.

But, as much as I can do as a consultative partner, you and your staff will supervise and evaluate the performance of each participant assignment by assignment. Please catch this vision.

• Promote current maintenance personnel into the cross-training mode, mechanics to electrical, and electrical to mechanical to generate the cross-trained, multi-craft classification.·      
• Then promote set-up operators into maintenance,·      
• Operators into setup operator positions,·      
• Hire from the street to train for operators.

      By this means you do not have to take a chance on the unknown. Through the process of pay-for-skill, you start low and grow your own workforce needs, job title by job title.

In our next post, we will explore the national database for performance skills, and address the means of determining the RTI and OJT needs for any one of 13,000 jobs. The resources are available, it is the experience of using these resources that we are offering.

Till next time

Mel

The Power of Progressive Revelation (In Training) Part 1

THE “POWER” OF “PROGRESSIVE REVELATION”. Part 1 of a series

Scripture (John 16:12 KJV) shares the words of Jesus, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now”.

Then, the Apostle Paul reinforced this thought,  (1Co 3:1 KJV ) “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.  I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able”. 

And the Apostle Peter add additional reinforcement (Heb 5:12  KJV)  “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God, and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat”. 

AS A CULTURE, WE HAVE GOTTEN TOO BIG FOR OUR BRITCHES

We live in an age of information. So much information, available in so many ways. Supplied by so many people. But seldom fact-checked or verified. With all the information available, what part of this information is useful in training semi-skilled and skilled workers to meet our workforce deficiencies. With the encouragement of the Government, and Business and Industry condoning such, Educators have promoted themselves far beyond the needs of We the People.

They have forgotten that we need the basics and we need them reviewed and refreshed at each new level or our progressive mastery. Worse than that, they have quit majoring on the minors, they have even quit teaching applied math, writing, and reading for comprehension (Readin, riting, and rithmatic the Three R’s).

AIMTRAIN IS PRESENTING THIS SERIES, BECAUSE WE MAJOR IN THE MINORS (THE NARROW ROAD), WE FOCUS ON THE BASICS. The others can pursue their choices.

This first submission of this series is submitted to establish a goal for the entirety of this dialog. It is based on the expressions that If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there … And, if you do not learn from your past, you are destined to repeat its mistakes.

With the current coronavirus pandemic, we are being informed that there more than seven and a half-million jobs that need semi-skilled and skilled employees and although there are people accessible, they lack the skills to fill the vacancies. Availability does not mean capability.

There are truly no shortcuts to performance mastery, but there are immeasurable benefits to be gained by implementing begin-low-and-grow, pay-for-skill transfer programs that focus on targeted job news.

A CHANGE IN STRATEGY

Investors, board members, administrators, managers, supervisors, and the balance of the existing workforce all need to face the facts, if you want different outcomes, you must do different things. You have tried to hire skilled personnel from the street.

The truth is that since the abandonment of proprietary industrial apprenticeship training in the early 1990s, the people on the streets that claimed to have skills, had other problems. Skills must truly be matched with the right attitude, and enough self-confidence to assure performance accountability.

The trend today is to employ head hunters to target other people’s workforce, rather than invest and evaluate the ROI of focused training. They would rather approve an added expense and risk the catastrophe of turnover (as much as $20,000.00 per hiring mistake).

Think back, how many temp agencies were you acquainted with in the 1990s? That industry has virtually exploded because it lets you, an employer, test-drive a candidate before you make a commitment. Is this really a win-win initiative? And the temp agencies make more money if they pull a temp before the 90-day probationary period, and place them at another location for another 90-day tryout.

With the entitlement mindset that has infected our contemporary economy, employers’ contract for temps because they don’t trust the assessment instruments that are available. Temps don’t put their heart into doing their best, because they know they are temps; and they know everyone around them knows they are temps. It is literally like hiking in a swamp. There is never any solid ground to put faith in.

Since the late 1980s, managerial consultants, and higher education have promoted TEAMS, AND WORK-GROUPS, but existing employees are reluctant to team with temps because they virtually have to start over every 90 days (the temp agency makes more money by not contracting with temps for continuation with the same customer).

They contract with them alright, but they place the temp with another employer. The only way the temp gets out of that vicious circle is to perform well enough, in spite of the obstacles, and get an offer of a fulltime position with one of the temps’ customers, before the end of the 90-day assignment.

THERE IS A BETTER WAY.

It is much easier to transfer skills to existing employees that have proven their value, then it is to take a chance on say-so skills. The best process is to evaluate your skill needs and categorize them into the following categories.

1). Operators,

2). Set-up operators,

3). Maintenance

3A). Mechanical - including Hydraulics, Pneumatics, and Lubrication,

3B). Electrical – including Electronics and Instrumentation),

4). Reliability Manufacturing Process Technician – (Cross skilled between Mechanical and Electrical with emphasis on Systems monitoring, diagnostics and preventive prescriptions),

5). Engineering Technicians, Quality Technicians, Supervision, Management, ETC.

In our next article, we will discuss a plan of action that will elaborate on the means of implementing these progressive levels of mastery for any student by means of an Individualized Developmental Plan (IDP), and virtually eliminate educational debt, sacrificial class schedules, and abnormal travel for classes in traditional locations.

What we offer is online 24/7 available anywhere the student has internet access with a smartphone or computer. They are not away from home during prime-time hours, and not imposing awkwardness on the family. Plus, they study in one-hour blocks instead of three or four hours at a time.

Till next time, Mel