Innovative approaches for technical, methodological, and socio-communicative competency development in production areas

Learning processes of employees in production areas no longer end with initial training, but continues during the entire working life. Technical, methodological and socio-communicative competencies are becoming increasingly important. This paper is devoted to the question of how industrial competency development can be designed in a demographically sensitive context. In the first step, selected competencies of employees and managers of different ages in the production areas are identified. The situation-related competencies refer to the lean production principle shop floor. A competency development concept, which combines work-oriented as well as work-integrated approaches was developed. This article addresses the work-oriented approaches and demonstrates how companies can design competency development approaches for the training of technical and methodological as well as socio-communicative competencies in production areas by the example of shop floor management. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.