The evidence guide provides advice on assessment and must be read in conjunction with the performance criteria, required skills and knowledge, range statement and the Assessment Guidelines for the Training Package.

Critical aspects for assessment and evidence required to demonstrate competency in this unit

A person who demonstrates competency in this unit must be able to provide evidence of their ability to:

determine relevant data, including variables for decisions

determine factors and variables subject to control

develop strategies for data collection that deliver the greatest overall benefit

implement data collection systems.

Context of and specific resources for assessment

Assessment of performance must be undertaken in a workplace using or implementing one or more competitive systems and practices.

Access may be required to:

workplace procedures and plans relevant to work area

specifications and documentation relating to planned, currently being implemented, or implemented changes to work processes and procedures relevant to the assessee

documentation and information in relation to production, waste, overheads and hazard control/management

reports from supervisors/managers

case studies and scenarios to assess responses to contingencies.

Method of assessment

A holistic approach should be taken to the assessment.

Competence in this unit may be assessed by using a combination of the following to generate evidence:

demonstration in the workplace

workplace projects

suitable simulation

case studies/scenarios (particularly for assessment of contingencies, improvement scenarios, and so on)

targeted questioning

reports from supervisors, peers and colleagues (third-party reports)

portfolio of evidence.

In all cases it is expected that practical assessment will be combined with targeted questioning to assess underpinning knowledge.

Where applicable, reasonable adjustment must be made to work environments and training situations to accommodate ethnicity, age, gender, demographics and disability.

Guidance information for assessment

Assessment processes and techniques must be culturally appropriate and appropriate to the oracy, language and literacy capacity of the candidate and the work being performed.

Required skills

Required skills include:

communicating and negotiating at all levels in the organisation and value stream and with individuals of different levels of literacy and numeracy

negotiating with employees, suppliers and customers, where necessary, to achieve access to, or collection of, data

undertaking self-directed problem solving and decision-making on issues of a broad and/or highly specialised nature and in a wide variety of contexts

developing or sourcing indicators for factors not easily measured

liaising with stakeholders on acceptable limits for benefits and costs in data collection procedures

Required knowledge

Required knowledge includes:

business needs of the organisation/section

information needs of individuals within the organisation

possible data available/potentially available to the organisation

methods of collecting available data

relationship between data available and information required

methods of converting data into useful information

methods of developing indicators for factors resistant to measurement

The range statement relates to the unit of competency as a whole. It allows for different work environments and situations that may affect performance. Bold italicised wording, if used in the performance criteria, is detailed below. Essential operating conditions that may be present with training and assessment (depending on the work situation, needs of the candidate, accessibility of the item, and local industry and regional contexts) may also be included.

Competitive systems and practices

Competitive systems and practices may include, but are not limited to:

lean operations

agile operations

preventative and predictive maintenance approaches

monitoring and data gathering systems, such as Systems Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) software, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, Materials Resource Planning (MRP) and proprietary systems

statistical process control systems, including six sigma and three sigma

Just in Time (JIT), kanban and other pull-related operations control systems

supply, value, and demand chain monitoring and analysis

5S

continuous improvement (kaizen)

breakthrough improvement (kaizen blitz)

cause/effect diagrams

overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)

takt time

process mapping

problem solving

run charts

standard procedures

current reality tree

Competitive systems and practices should be interpreted so as to take into account:

the stage of implementation of competitive systems and practices

the size of the enterprise

the work organisation, culture, regulatory environment and the industry sector

Variables

Variables for this unit are:

measurable inputs, outputs or characteristic of processes or operations that have no fixed quantitative value.

Factors

Factors include:

any variable that is a part of, contributes to, or leads to the quantum of another variable. Ideally factors themselves should be able to be measured. However, in some operations there may be factors that are resistant to objective measurement (e.g. creativity in design, customer colour preferences and life cycles for new products). In these cases indicators for the value of these factors may need to be developed (e.g. through surveys, approximations or experiments)

Decision

A decision may include:

a change, improvement, new/altered process or system which requires data in order to monitor it or where data is required to make a decision regarding the selection of alternatives