A skill matrix template for electrical equipment makers (free download)

Ask a bay supervisor at a transformer works who could take over HV disc winding tomorrow. The reply comes in seconds, with a name. Ask who could take over if that person were also away, and the pause gets long. The grid below exists for that second question.

It is laid out for a spreadsheet, one heading per column, and it works on a printed A3 sheet pinned beside the bay notice board. After the grid come column sets for each kind of electrical shop, a way to grade that survives arguments, and who keeps which part current.

TOP ROW: Bay | Shift (A, B, C or General) | Month | Filled by | Countersigned by.
LEFT COLUMNS: Name | Token number | Joined on | Present grade | Mentor.
SKILL COLUMNS: up to eight, taken from the route card in the order a unit travels.
CELL FORMAT: grade / day earned / checker's initials / unit serial. Sample: 3 / 04-09 / RK / TR-2291.
GRADE 0: Untouched.
GRADE 1: Practising beside a named senior, never alone.
GRADE 2: Alone on repeat or catalogue work, with a senior inspecting output.
GRADE 3: Alone on specials and fresh drawings. Inspects other people's work.
GRADE 4: Coaches juniors and countersigns grades 1 and 2 for this skill.
PERMIT COLUMNS: Crane and sling | Live or HV test bay | Drying oven and oil plant | Powder booth. Each shows yes or no, issue day and renewal day.
RIGHT COLUMNS: Next skill | Target month | Pay grade linked.
BOTTOM STRIP: Any skill where a shift has one grade 3 hand or none, with that name and today's date.
RULE: No grade without an inspected unit, and its serial written in the cell.

Keep each bay to eight skill columns. A sheet with twenty gets admired once and ignored after. Take the columns from the route card or traveller, in the sequence work actually moves.

• Panel bay: schematic reading, cutting and mounting, lugging and crimping, ferrule and label, duct dressing, PLC and drive I/O wiring, continuity and megger, functional test.
• Transformer bay: LV spiral winding, HV disc winding, core stacking, coil and core assembly, oven loading, tanking and oil filling, ratio and resistance tests, slinging.
• Motor line: lamination stacking, coil insertion, slot lacing and wedging, varnish dipping, shaft press-fit, dynamic balancing, bench running, stripping returned stators.
• Switchgear and boards: CNC punching and bending, busbar cutting and drilling, joint torque and paint marking, breaker mounting, control wiring, HV withstand, witness preparation.
• Cable line: rod breakdown, annealing, stranding or bunching, running the extruder, setting a new size on it, spark testing, drum winding, drum handling.
• Lighting and chargers: LED board handling, driver fitting, gasket seating and potting, harness making, firmware flashing, burn-in rack loading, load-bank testing.

A works that builds two products, such as LT panels and feeder pillars, runs one sheet per bay rather than one giant grid. The fitter who moves between bays appears on both, with a grade on each.

1. 1

   Write one line per grade, per skill

   Sit with the strongest hand in that skill and write what grade 2 and grade 3 work looks like. A grade 3 wireman, for instance, wires a panel from an unseen drawing and it clears functional test with nothing to redo.

2. 2

   Inspect a unit, not a chat

   The checker looks at a coil, a joint, a panel or a drum the person made alone. Its serial goes in the cell, so evidence can be traced months later.

3. 3

   Let a grade 4 countersign

   Supervisors short of hands are tempted to promote early. A senior who owns the skill judges readiness more fairly, and the floor trusts that judgement.

4. 4

   Treat permits as separate

   Crane work, the live test bay and the oil plant are safety clearances. A brilliant winder without a sling permit still waits for the crane crew.

5. 5

   Circle the thin skills

   Copy every skill with a single grade 3 hand on a shift into the bottom strip. That strip becomes next month's cross-training plan, with names beside each line.

Expect the first fill to flatter the shop. Supervisors tend to mark their regulars a grade high. The unit serial in each cell is what corrects that within a month, because a grade with no traceable job gets challenged at the review.

• Bay supervisor: changes the cell that same afternoon when a junior passes, rather than rebuilding a month of progress on the thirtieth.
• Grade 4 senior: countersigns each change and writes the unit serial beside it.
• Office or HR: owns the one true spreadsheet, pins a fresh print beside the bay board monthly and files last month's print.
• Owner: reads only the bottom strip at the monthly review and asks what is planned for each line on it.
• Each quarter: grades are set beside pay, so nobody who climbed two grades is still paid as a helper.

That quarterly pay check decides whether the grid lives. If moving from grade 2 to grade 3 changes nothing in the pay slip, people stop asking to be checked. Tying grades to pay steps is the core of grading people by competence on a shop floor.

Begin with one bay on one shift, fill it honestly and read the bottom strip. Our page on HR for electrical equipment makers explains why craft sits in so few hands in this trade. The post on skill held by a few pairs of hands works through the fix. Training routes built on the same grades appear on the transformer winder learning path and the panel wireman learning path. To have the grid built around your own bays and pay steps, send us a brief.