The development of job performance criteria for textile factory technicians

Textile machinery manufacturers continuously strive to make faster, more efficient processing machines. As technology advances and mechanical speeds increase, it is imperative that textile manufacturing companies focus on machine maintenance, since poor machine maintenance is known to result in poor quality and deflated processing efficiencies. This study focused on persons who are in part responsible for daily machine maintenance on airjet spinning machine---the airjet spinning technician. Technicians are responsible for daily maintenance on spinning machines, machines that use compressed air and mechanical means to impart structural integrity to a strand of fibers to make yam. The purpose of this work was to develop job performance measures for air jet spinning technicians.;Technicians, supervisors, and managers in six textile manufacturing plants were observed and interviewed as a means for discerning tasks technicians perform, and a task list was compiled. The next step was to assess the content validity of the appraisal instrument through subject matter expert conferences. Finally, an appraisal instrument was developed and supervisors in two plants rated a total of 16 technicians. Using data from the appraisal instrument administration, the degree of adequacy of the developed job performance measures was judged using the psychometric notions of validity and reliability. Evidence for the reliability and validity of job performance scores obtained using the appraisal instrument was offered. The performance appraisal instrument developed in this work can be used by manufacturing managers to assess the performance of airjet technicians, and it is believed that the methodology followed in this work can be used to develop performance criteria for technicians in other manufacturing areas.