Purchasing and Expediting
With the rapid changes we have experienced in our industry, we have reached the point where the skills and the knowledge of our employees is a critical difference in developing and maintaining our relationships with our customers. We have arrived at the point that we must find every part that every customer orders, and do this on the day that they order the parts. Supply chains and transportation logistics are complicated subjects and need specialized skills.
The comprehensive skills assessment covers all of the topics and subject matter required in the course of performing the purchasing and expediting job function. In assessing this task, we have taken all of the classes involved in the Parts Business and created a skills and knowledge assessment questionnaire. We have taken the 900 questions, from the pretest and final assessment, from all of the classes offered for the Parts Business and boiled them down to ninety essential questions. Each question has an answer within a multiple-choice selection.
The results from the CSA, Comprehensive Skills Assessment, categorize the skills and knowledge of the individual being assessed, into one of our four levels of accomplishment: Developing, Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced.
These assessments can be used, in conjunction with background checks and interviews, to screen applicants before they are hired. They should also be used in the annual performance review with each employee. They can even be used as a foundation piece of information related to the wages and salaries paid to the employees. Finally, and this is the genesis of the creation of the comprehensive assessment skills, the assessment has been developed to be used to create a specific employee development program for each employee in the parts and service business teams.