Proskills has joined forces with three other sector skills councils - Cogent, Improve and Semta - to help bring improved profitability through lean manufacturing to the print industry.

Lean manufacturing has to be of benefit to all print businesses. However, there is a worrying lack of discussion on effective training for sales teams and customer facing staff. I'm interested to know if printers perceive this as an issue? Matthew Parker www.printandprocurement.com

Whilst I think business improvement techniques such as Six Sigma, TQM and 'Lean' etc. can be very helpful to some businesses \(when we are not overwhelmed with the credit crunch and recession), I do think it is regrettable that Proskills and other Sector Skills Councils have decided to start selling training programmes to employers, competing in an already mature and somewhat crowded market led by many excellent providers such as Cranfield, the Manufacturing Advisory Service, universities and others. The Sector Skills Councils were set up by government to be 'led by employers' in order to achieve a 'step change' in training in their sectors. Unfortunately, as has happened so often in the past, they can end up selling government funded services to the employers and we end up with 'tail wagging dog' situation. In fact, supposedly objective advice gets skewed towards what the quango or funded body can deliver \(and can obtain funding for), irrespective of its real relevance, need or value to your business. And I say that from many years of experience of quangos trying to \(miss-)sell me products on their terms, not mine as a purchaser. No doubt the Proskills Printing Industry Board will be told about this latest initiative when it meets in a couple of weeks time, and we may well endorse and support it, but it's not 'employer led' when these things are rolled out first and reported to the industry's employers second. <i>p.s. The Business Improvement Techniques NVQs are effectively owned and controlled by SEMTA \(another Sector Skills Council) and generate an income for it. If SEMTA was in the Financial Services sector, it would be obliged by law to tell you that it benefited financially from your purchase before it sold you the product.</i>

Matthew - The Proskills 'Qualifications Reform Group' \(as we are now called) is working on a higher level printing 'National Occupational Standard' that is aimed partly at staff in customer-facing rolls and will include a wide range of interpersonal, management and technical skills and knowledge. This should lead to 'bite-sized' units that build into a qualification \(for those that want to obtain a qualification).

Matthew - as part of our role in this programme, we are building capacity not only for Analysts and Assessors, but also for the wider brokerage. The wider brokerage refers to anyone or any organisation that promotes or sells this programme to employers. Mark - Let me be clear. Our remit is to develop capacity to enbale Business Improvement Techniques to be implemented - not to actually do any delivery of diagnostic processes or NVQ assessment. The analyst and the recommendations they make will be based on the results of the diagnostic and only implemented in agreement with the employer. The BIT qualification is not the main driver for this although in many cases, will be the main outcome. But it will be horses for courses and very much about bespoking interventions to ensure that it has a real bottom line positive difference for all employers - regardless of the courses undertaken to develop staff. Not all employers will want BIT NVQs and so we will also make use of bite-sized and modular programmes at that already exist in the market place. Many thanks Jonathan