Developing Competencies for Continuous Improvement Processes on the Shop Floor through Learning Factories–Conceptual Design and Empirical Validation

Developing employees’ competencies in order for them to be able to solve problems quickly is an essential feature of future-oriented production. The object of research and practice in this field is to develop action-oriented approaches implemented through learning factories. So far, however, these approaches have not taken sufficient account of production workers, even though the development of their competencies is necessary for a broadly based and continuous improvement process. An integrative approach is presented. It enables the development of problem-solving competencies among shop-floor workers during a target-oriented continuous improvement (CI) process with the use of learning cells.