:) Memories!
You made me muse on my the training at work over some thirty years...
Most genuinely was valuable for my work and for me:
- Introductions to Microsoft software (indeed, computers): MS-DOS, WIN 3.1, 'Word' and 'Excel'.
I used 'Excel' regularly at work, and still use it and 'Word' in my leisure interests. Also MS 'Access', which I found extremely hard to learn and then never needed use anyway.
- Basic Powerboat Handling: used a boat only once then the need disappeared.
- Overhead crane operating and slinging: used that regularly.
- Manual-handling, and First-Aid: valuable not only at work but in life generally.
- Support from the company's training department for evening-classes in GCSE Maths and Physics - their standard school courses and examinations. Refreshers to help my "career", such as it was.
Of less value...
- An introduction to a special stores-administration software. The one-day "course" proved merely a demonstration we all found unsatisfactory, and I never needed use it anyway.
- ISO9001.
We all took a one-day introduction to this international management-control system when our main customers insisted the organisation become accredited.
ISO900x is often described as "quality control" but wrongly, although based largely on the UK's Ministry of Defence DEF-STAN and I think French and German equivalents that were all genuine, physical product QA methods. (One of my previous employers had gain DEF-STAN accreditation.)
We were told the ISO concocted ISO900x because the US government would grudgingly accept "International" but refused out of hand even fellow-NATO countries QA systems, however good. Uncle Sam's "Not Invented 'Ere" Syndrome.
It is even more a rip-off so than the EU's "CE" system, mainly to keep test-houses in clover. At least CE with its "Certificates of Conformance" does control real product safety (not necessarily quality) and the probity of quoted measurements for trade. ISO900x is only managerial-process rhubarb.
Our firm did not take proper advice, too. It copied barmy "Procedure" document templates that were utter rubbish from American business-college books, and generally exceeded requirements so much the external accreditation auditors told the Directors to throw huge swathes of it away!
However, it replaced something even sillier.
Called "TQP"- whatever that stood for - it was yet another fad invented by Japanese car-builders or American academics of unknown managerial experience. Rather ironically, it supposedly gave staff more initiative and control over their work. We were shown an excruciating, "home-made" video and given glossy leaflets telling us good TQP is; but never told how it might operate, how it would be implemented, and it just expired.
TQP was based on staff initiative.
ISO900x is the reverse, top-down, squashing initiative.
