de Havilland is the Toronto based manufacturing facility for Bombardier, the leading manufacturer in the world of regional jet and prop airplanes. The Toronto facility fabricates a wide variety of aircraft parts, provides extensive engineering services and assembles aircraft and tests them prior to delivery to airlines around the world.
The aeronautical industry is very competitive and at the time of this assignment was undergoing further significant change. Senior management in Toronto realized they needed to reduce dramatically the time it takes to build planes, while also improving their production efficiency. It was determined the only way to achieve these very difficult objectives was to change most of the in-plant supervision and in doing so, ensure that the capability of the new employees was substantially above that of the current workforce. The decision was made to design and implement a special school for production supervisors. All supervisors would be required to attend, take a common curriculum and pass a series of exams before starting work. Prior to this initiative, supervisors were hired and started work immediately. The school was seen as a vehicle for de Havilland to train and develop a new group of supervisors who would have the tools, the appreciation and the capabilities to meet the challenges of achieving world class standards in production.
LSM became involved in this exciting challenge at this point. After a thorough review of the objectives of the plan, we recommended a benchmarking study to ensure the curriculum in fact met world class standards. Further, we recommended a new recruiting strategy. Our recommendation was based on identifying supervisors who were outstanding performers in their industrial setting. Previously, de Havilland had hired only supervisors with an aeronautical background. The selection process consisted only of interviews. LSM recommended a much more robust selection process for candidates.
LSM identified a number of corporations who had successfully implemented training and development schools for their supervisors. Using our benchmarking process and our wide range of contacts, the final report provided de Havilland with the knowledge of how to improve their preliminary curriculum design.
In designing the new recruiting strategy, we first worked with the implementation team to develop a job profile based on our competency modeling techniques. We also worked with the team to write a compelling story, which described to the applicants, the reasons why jobs and a career with de Havilland would be worthwhile to investigate. Next, we build a very rigorous selection process that included competency evaluations, team interviews {using high value behavioral questions from LSM's competency modeling work} and research-based screening in order to identify high performing candidates. Due to high levels of activity in the Human Resources department, all recruiting work on this assignment was outsourced to LSM's search practice. The senior executive who would make the final hiring decision received a package on finalist candidates from LSM that included references, competency assessments, interview results and notes and recommendations on specific development requirements.
In both our benchmarking and recruiting assignments, LSM's approach was to deliver our work at levels never experienced before by de Havilland management in order to assist them in their commitment to achieve world class performance.
