Industrial Engineering
A line where everyone does one job looks efficient until the morning three people are absent.
— %
Fill rate of the skill matrix
Averages across the matrix hide exactly the risk worth finding. A healthy overall index is entirely compatible with one critical operation that a single operator can perform, and that operation is where the line stops — the matrix must be read column by column for minimum coverage, not summed. Skill is also treated as binary here, whereas a recently trained operator works well below the rate of an experienced one, so nominal coverage overstates real capacity. Absenteeism is applied as an average rate and does not model correlated absence, which is the case that actually breaks a plan.
Work-Cell Polyvalence & Factory Flexibility Index — free, with the formula and a worked example, at Textile School.