Narrowing competency gaps to enable manufacturability of new mobile communication products - a technical training methodology

Convergence of communications and computing technologies in today´s industrial standards have created new manufacturing competency gaps in the areas of radio-frequency, mixed-signal and digital high-speed engineering for mobile communication products at Intel Malaysia. The manufacturing of these products cannot be done without training in these areas. No centralized and structured training program on a site-wide scale in Malaysia was ever carried out to address the manufacturing gaps. Furthermore, efforts to measure performance-after-training were never performed. This paper describes an innovative technical training program to illustrate a methodology used to reduce manufacturing competency time by narrowing the knowledge and skill gaps. We also introduced first-of-its-kind in-depth evaluations on the training impact: job application of training knowledge and skills acquired, training return of investment (ROI) in terms of project execution time saved, forecasted project cost savings as success indicators and intellectual properties (IP) generated.