In a role, until we identify the specific decisions to be made and specific problems to be solved, the hiring manager will never hire the right person. This is not magic.

For a technician –
In this key area, what are the decisions that have to be made?
What is the time frame for those decisions?

• Am I working fast enough to accomplish the output assigned to me today?
• Does my output meet the quality spec assigned to the work today?
• Does my attention to quality slow down my output?
• If I work faster, does quality suffer?

In this key area, what problems have to be solved?
What is the time frame for those solutions?

• Is this machine noise normal or abnormal?
• If the machine noise is abnormal, do I need to shut the machine down, now?
• Can I wait to shut down the machine when it finishes its current cycle?
• Can I wait to shut down the machine at the end of my shift? And then, call maintenance?

For a project manager –
In this key area, what are the decisions that have to be made?
What is the time frame of those decisions?

• Is the average output of production this week, sufficient to meet the output target for the month?
• If output will fall short, what things can I shift in production to speed things up overall? More hands on deck? Overtime?
• If output will overshoot, are we cutting corners in quality? Did I overestimate resources required? Can I temporarily reassign team members to another area?
• If output will overshoot, are we using up raw materials in one process that may be needed in another process? What are the lead times on the raw materials? Re-order thresholds?

In this key area, what problems have to be solved?
What is the time frame for those solutions?

• How often will we sample output for quality problems?
• In what step of each process do we sample output for quality problems?
• Should we discover a quality problem, what is our first step to prevent more output that does not meet spec?
• When we solve a quality problem, how does that change our sample frequency?

It’s all about the work. Every role contains appropriate problem solving and decision making.