Strategic Diagnosis and Training Plan: An Industrial SME Case Study

What was the company’s starting point?

An SME that was investing without a skills plan. The new line was on order and the target customers identified, but nobody had written down who needed to learn what, or by when.

This case study is composite and anonymous: it combines situations we meet in our assignments with manufacturers, without describing any particular client. It contains no amounts and names no GIAC.

Two acronyms frame the story for readers outside Morocco. A GIAC (“groupement interprofessionnel à l’appui du conseil”, in the wording of Law No. 60-17, art. 32) is an inter-professional advisory group set up by employers’ federations, usually by sector, that funds part of the training engineering of its member companies. The CSF, the special training contracts (contrats spéciaux de formation) of OFPPT, Morocco’s public vocational training office, reimburse part of the training itself.

The company makes steel structures and machined parts for other manufacturers, in the Tangier region. It employs around a hundred and fifty people, most of them operators, welders and setters. Its management had decided on three investments: a laser cutting line, a robotic welding cell and a dimensional inspection workshop. Its new customers require a quality management system certified to ISO 9001:2026.

The starting diagnosis came down to three findings:

• Training on the fly. Each workshop manager ordered courses for their own team, with no link to the investment or to the roles of tomorrow.
• Known risks, poorly handled. Several near misses during handling under overhead cranes, and cutting scrap put down “to a lack of training” without analysis.
• No approved engineering. The company had never applied to a GIAC; its few CSF files fell under unplanned training.

Its professional federation was an ex officio member of the GIAC for its sector. First step: join that GIAC, as the GIAC manual of March 2003 requires (point 5.1), and check that its vocational training tax (taxe de formation professionnelle, TFP) declarations with the CNSS, Morocco’s national social security fund, were in order.

Why start with a strategic diagnosis?

Because the investment was transforming the roles before it transformed the training needs. Analysing needs on the existing organisation would have produced a plan that was already out of date by the time the line was commissioned.

Management weighed three arguments drawn from the texts. Under the GIAC manual, engineering that follows a strategy study approved by the GIAC qualifies for a higher rate. Under the CSF manual, a company with an approved strategic diagnosis study benefits, for certain bands of declared TFP, from a more favourable reimbursement ceiling. And the certificate of approval of that diagnosis joins the technical file for planned actions. The reference rule remains coverage of 70% of the engineering cost excluding tax, raised to 80% after a strategy study validated by the GIAC, within a reimbursement cap of MAD 100,000; these rates and this ceiling remain in force.

The timeline followed the order set by the texts. The certificate of access to the CSF system was requested in October of the previous year, since it also covers the diagnostic and engineering actions funded by the GIAC (CSF manual, P 1.0). The GIAC application described the development project, the objectives, the consultancy’s proposal and its estimated cost (standard agreement, art. 12). After the favourable opinion of the commitments advisory committee (comité consultatif des engagements), the contract was signed within fifteen days, and the GIAC was informed 24 hours before the study began.

The strategy study linked each strategic direction to its means and its skills, as the GIAC manual provides (point 4.1.1):

How was the needs analysis carried out?

Through a second study, the training plan engineering, applied for with the GIAC once the strategic diagnosis had been approved. It measured the gaps role by role, then sorted out what training could actually address.

The consultancy mapped some thirty roles, six of them critical: laser programmer, setter, robot programmer, inspector, crane operator, team leader. For each, it wrote down the required skills and their origin, then measured the gaps in three ways: an interview with each workshop manager, placement tests for welders and setters, and workstation observation for crane operators. The year’s non-conformities and the near-miss register completed the measurement.

The sorting changed the plan. Three needs expressed as training needs were not:

• the cutting scrap came partly from worn clamping tooling: the point went to the maintenance plan;
• the inspection errors stemmed from a missing work instruction: the point went to the quality plan;
• the need for an additional programmer was a recruitment matter, not a training one.

This sorting, written into the report, met the criterion the GIAC assesses: making the recommendations needed to upgrade skills (standard agreement, art. 13). The detailed method, step by step, is described in our article training needs analysis for GIAC approval, step by step.

What did the GIAC-approved plan contain?

Nine actions, each tied to a role, a measured gap and a requirement, with its timing set to the commissioning of the equipment.

The in-house training was led by the most experienced setter. The May 2006 CSF manual limits reimbursement of planned in-house training to 30% of the overall financial participation granted; the plan took this into account.

The actions were spread across several providers. The consultancy that wrote the engineering could deliver some of them: the 25% limit set in 2006 was repealed by Amendment No. 2 of 2014. But the manual lists among the actions to be checked as a priority those of a plan more than 30% delivered by a single body (point 7.3), and the company preferred a split it could justify. The eligibility of each provider was checked on the CSF portal before the technical file, including that of the laser line supplier.

The GIAC issued the certificate of approval of the engineering in the spring. The technical file for planned actions was filed before 30 June: certificate of approval of the strategic diagnosis, report of the engineering action, certificate of approval of the engineering, summary sheet (model 1), action sheets (F2) and provider sheets (F3), as the CSF manual requires (P 2.1). The path that follows, from the CSF contract to the transfer order, is described in our OFPPT training reimbursement guide.

What changed for the company?

The order of decisions. Training became a line in the investment project, arbitrated by management, rather than a series of workshop orders.

• A single owner. The HR director was appointed as the GIAC contact person for both studies, as the model contract provides (art. XII), then as training manager for the CSF management unit.
• Two GIAC reimbursements claimed by the rules. Each study was paid in full to the consultancy, then the claim was filed with the accounting documents, the report and the presentation of the resulting actions (standard agreement, art. 17).
• A defensible plan. Each action refers to a page of the report, and each gap to evidence: a test, an observation, a non-conformity or a near miss.
• The next financial year prepared. The standard agreement funds a new engineering study only at least one year after the previous one, and a new strategy study only after two years, provided the plan has been implemented (art. 10). The year’s review, carried out against the plan, became the first document of the next application.

What lessons for your own training engineering?

Solid training engineering starts with strategy, is measured role by role and ends with a plan in OFPPT’s format, approved in time. Funding follows the order of operations, never the reverse.

• Membership of the relevant GIAC is up to date and TFP declarations are in order.
  
• The CSF access certificate is requested in October of the previous year.
  
• The strategic diagnosis comes before the needs analysis when an investment changes the roles.
  
• Each study starts after the GIAC’s favourable opinion and the signature of the contract.
  
• Gaps are measured with evidence, not just gathered in interviews.
  
• Needs that training cannot address come out of the plan, with the reason.
  
• Actions are timed to the commissioning of the equipment.
  
• Providers are spread and their eligibility checked on the CSF portal.
  
• The engineering is approved and the technical file filed before 30 June.
  
• The year’s review prepares the next application.
  

The general framework is presented in our GIAC training engineering guide and, from management’s point of view, in our guide to OFPPT special training contracts for CEOs and HR.