Manufacturers face a series of difficult issues these days. For one, they must compete with overseas producers who manufacture at lower costs. For another, the aging workforce requires that young, bright but inexperienced replacements are quickly “trained up”.

It has typically taken 20-30 years to train a new hire to fill high-level manufacturing jobs. Faced with the challenges above, manufacturers realize they must provide more effective training to condense this training cycle. And that’s why it’s increasingly important to turn to the proven, researched, and scientifically valid techniques of training development and instructional design when creating training material for manufacturing.