Development and application of competency model in manufacturing operations: An overview

A knowledgeable and technically competent workforce is one of the main operations components that influence the positioning of an organisation in global market competition.Competencies can offer workers an opportunity to define excellence in job performance.However, since job task do not remain fixed and to be aligned with rapid advancement in global market competition, it needs to be re-visited from time to time.Organizations need to build its strategies to continuously establish and enhance different competencies of different purposes in order to stay competitive. In manufacturing operations management, workforce is said to be the resources besides machines where skills are managed through a very simple model which is far from expressing the requirements of competence over the process management. Nevertheless, no generic framework is suggested and there is a huge gap between a very simple off-the-shelf description of basic skills or competencies and the possibility to define its own framework.Therefore, it requires an important development effort to develop and establish one. This paper aims to review the past studies on competencies and competency model while exploring the development and application process of establishing one in manufacturing operations environment.The review highlights the importance of competencies development which not only benefited to the individual worker and the organization but also can gives great impact to country as part of the initiative to scale up workforce productivity to achieve next stage of economic competitiveness