Technical Skills and Workplace Practices
What the exam tests
This section bridges trade competence and workplace behaviour: SOPs, documentation, quality tools, maintenance, measurement and tolerance, escalation, teamwork, confidentiality and professional conduct.
Core rules
- An SOP is the approved step-by-step method for a task: purpose, scope, tools, safety, steps, acceptance criteria and records. Follow the current revision; deviations need written approval.
- Quality tools: PDCA (plan, do, check, act), 5S (sort, set in order, shine, standardise, sustain), Kaizen for small continuous improvement, root-cause analysis with 5 Whys or a fishbone diagram, and Six Sigma for defect reduction.
- Maintenance: preventive is scheduled before failure, predictive is condition-based such as vibration monitoring, breakdown is repair after failure. Preventive costs less in total than repeated breakdowns.
- Measurement: read the instrument to the precision it allows, record units, respect tolerance (the permitted deviation) and keep instruments calibrated.
- Inventory: FIFO for perishables, bin cards, defined reorder levels.
- Escalation: tell the immediate supervisor first, in writing when safety, quality or delivery is affected. Silence is never neutral.
- Conduct: punctuality, dress code, no personal phone on the shop floor, respect for the chain of command, and confidentiality of drawings, client data and pricing.
- A shift handover states machine status, pending work, abnormalities and action taken.
Worked example
A press produces 12 rejects in a batch of 500. Defect rate = 12 / 500 x 100 = 2.4%, against a target of 1%. Plan: define and measure the problem. Do: trial a new clamping jig on 200 parts. Check: 1 rejection in 200 = 0.5%. Act: update the SOP with the new jig setting, train the shift and monitor for four weeks. The reasoning that earns marks is that the gain is verified and standardised; a one-off fix with no SOP change does not close the PDCA loop.
Marks-losing traps
- Describing a fix but skipping Check and Act.
- Saying verbal instruction is enough for a process change.
- Confusing preventive maintenance with repair after a breakdown.
- Escalating over the supervisor to the plant head as a first step.