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At least three things have led me to create this blog:
(1) The impact of the recession on equipment training organizations. After helping hundreds of high tech businesses implement performance-based equipment training (PBET) during the last 15 years, the current recession has created new challenges:
- Expertise has been lost as people have been forced out of the industry.
- Responsibility for training, in some cases, has shifted to staff with no training credentials or experience.
- Pressure has increased to revert to pre-PBET methods of training in some companies.
- The work burden on those who remain at the helm has increased, under the “do more with less” mantra.
As the creator of this web site, I hope to address some of the above issues and provide support for those who continue to work in high tech equipment industries in positions that include training, documentation, and related performance improvement fields. In a phrase, I want to help our industry trainers “recession-proof” PBET. Although the strength of this recession is real, companies need the benefits of PBET more than ever.
(2) The decline and dissolution of the Technician Performance Improvement Council (TPIC). Since 1992, TPIC activities provided professional support and camaraderie for equipment trainers in the semiconductor industry. After its dissolution in 2008, a new organization was anticipated but has not yet evolved. Many who were involved in TPIC have left the industry; those who continue working in the semiconductor industry have been so overwhelmed with recession imposed work assignments that they have had far less time for inter-company collaboration. The organizational vacuum has resulted in:
- Less networking among performance/training professionals within the semiconductor industry. This is true in industries like the medical equipment industry as well.
- Less collaboration on industry guidelines than in the past. Although there yet exists an excellent vehicle for this in the form of the SEMI Standards Equipment Training Task Force, very few actually participate (at least during 2008) compared to the degree of participation that existed in the past in TPIC.
So I hope to use this site to help professionals keep in touch, as a repository for some of the resources created over the years, and as a point of contact and encouragement for continued/renewed inter-company networking and collaboration.
(3) The huge personal impact for so many colleagues — so many high tech equipment training professionals — as they find themselves without a job. I hope to share what some of these people are doing. I also hope to provide some resources that may help some of these colleagues weather the current storm more successfully. I am thinking about four areas - but any one of them could be the subject of massive websites of their own; I only hope to contribute to the discussion and point to other online resources. Here are the four areas on my mind:
- Looking for a job.
- Creating a successful small (home) business.
- Finding comic relief and encouragement.
- Reviewing personal financial management issues.
In conclusion, I hope this can be a place where current and former equipment trainers for high tech industries will find both personal and professional support as they face the storm of the current recession.
Please join in, and share what you have been doing to survive the recession.
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