A monthly people review for electrical equipment makers: ten questions for the owner

Owners of electrical works usually hear about people problems in the order they explode. A tester complains at month end. A winder's resignation letter arrives on a Monday. A night-shift extruder runs eccentric core for three hours because the setter was covering two lines. Each surprise sat in a register the month before.

Ten standing questions pull those registers into one sitting of under an hour. No software is needed. The habit sticks because the wording never alters, which lets this month's replies sit beside last month's. The sheet comes first, then where each answer already lives, then how to read the rework answer for your product.

MONTH: ______  WORKS: ______  DRAFTED BY: ______  PRESENT: owner, production head, test in-charge, HR or office.
Q1 THIN SKILLS: Which skills have a single grade 3 hand, or none, on any shift?
Q2 TEST HOLDS: How many units got a hold tag, how many left on a concession slip, and was any hold overturned without a written reason?
Q3 REWORK BY STAGE: Which stage caused this month's rework and site returns, and does the traveller show whose hands?
Q4 OVERTIME PER BAY: How many extra hours did each bay book, and which order or tender date drove each block?
Q5 THE NEXT EIGHT WEEKS: Do dispatch dates and tender closings ahead need a skill some shift lacks?
Q6 LEAVERS AND THE QUIET ONES: Who resigned, who is serving notice, and whose attendance has slipped without comment?
Q7 JOINERS: Did last month's joiners complete the first-week sheet, and are they still on the muster roll?
Q8 OPEN ROLES: Which vacancy is older than a month, and is the block pay, channel or interviewer?
Q9 NEAR MISSES: Any near miss or injury at the test bay, crane hook, varnish oven or CNC punch, and is its fix closed?
Q10 SENIORS: Which senior winder, wireman, setter or tester did the owner sit with, and who is learning from them?
AGAINST EACH ANSWER: Action | Named person | Date due | Closed by next sitting (yes or no).

None of the ten needs a new report. Each points at something a clerk, a tester or a supervisor already fills in, often kept in a different cupboard.

• Q1: the bottom strip of each bay's skill matrix, shift by shift.
• Q2: hold-tag stubs from the test bay and any concession slips signed that month.
• Q3: travellers for reworked units and the field return register carrying winder or wireman codes.
• Q4: time-office overtime slips, sorted by bay rather than by name.
• Q5: the dispatch calendar beside the estimation team's tender list.
• Q6 and Q7: resignation letters, the attendance muster and last month's first-week sheets.
• Q8: the vacancy list with the day each requisition was raised.
• Q9: the near-miss book and the incident file.
• Q10: the owner's own diary, the hardest register of all to keep honest.

Rework looks different in each trade, so the question needs a product lens before the answer makes sense.

• Panels: faults found at functional test cost an hour; the same fault found at commissioning costs a site trip. Count them separately.
• Transformers: a tap showing the wrong ratio, or unbalanced resistance between phases, points at one coil, and the traveller should name who wound it.
• Motors: first bench-run failures sorted by the winder's stamp show whether the daily count is pushing speed over slot fill.
• Switchgear and boards: a joint found running hot on site traces back to a torque mark, or the lack of one.
• Cable: scrap metres by line and shift reveal set-up trouble after changeovers, usually on nights.
• Lighting and chargers: burn-in rejects by station show which step the temporary hands are missing.

1. 1

   Pin a fixed slot

   Choose a week after attendance closes for wages and before the month-end dispatch crush. A review that moves around the calendar soon stops being held.

2. 2

   Draft answers two days early

   The person keeping HR records writes one line per question from the registers above. The owner reads it the evening before.

3. 3

   Spend the hour on actions

   Where an answer needs one, name who and by when. Anything left without a name gets struck off, because it will not happen.

4. 4

   Open with last month's lines

   Five minutes on whether previous actions closed. That check, more than the questions, is what shifts behaviour on the floor.

5. 5

   File every sheet together

   After six sittings the file shows which prompts keep returning identical answers, and those need a deeper fix.

• Casual leave clustering on Mondays soon after increment letters go out.
• A senior who stops volunteering for Sunday changeovers or urgent coils he used to take gladly.
• Half-days taken mid-week with no reason given, which often line up with interviews elsewhere.
• Requests for an experience certificate or copies of trade certificates held in the personnel file.
• A commissioning engineer refusing outstation trips he never questioned before.

None of these proves anything. Each is a cue for the owner, or a manager the person trusts, to have a quiet word before a resignation letter lands.

Most answers can wait for next month. Three should not. An overturned hold with nothing written teaches the bay that tags do not count, and the tester stops using them. A lone setter or tester on a shift means one fever stops a line or stacks up the dispatch queue. A near miss with an open fix is the next injury. If any of these surfaces, act before the shift ends. The sign-off question deals with the first in depth.

The first sitting is slow because answers are scattered. By the third, the clerk knows which cupboard to open. Overtime sorted by bay makes Q4 quick, and the cable plant shift and leave guide shows how to set the slips up that way. Board makers chasing tender dates can lean on the shift planning page for distribution board makers for Q5. Once the questions outgrow paper, a standing people report can carry them. Why winding, wiring and testing raise these particular prompts is explained under HR across electrical equipment manufacturing.