| Skill | What it means | Level needed |
|---|
| Works safely in and around production: wears the required PPE, recognizes machine, chemical and lifting hazards on the floor, follows lockout/tagout and hazard communication rules, and keeps the inspection area clean and orderly. | |
| Does the arithmetic the job runs on: fractions and decimals, unit conversions including inch to metric, percentages, significant digits and rounding, and the geometry the job's own prints or specs call for, so a raw reading becomes the number the spec uses and can be judged against its tolerance. | |
| Takes an accurate measurement with the hand instruments at the bench, rules and tapes, calipers, micrometers, thickness gages and dial indicators, reads the scale without parallax error, and repeats the reading to prove it. | |
| Looks the product over against the written workmanship standard, approved sample or proof for the job, catches the defects this plant's own processes leave, and manages fatigue and distraction so the tenth one gets the same look as the first. | |
| Knows how the product in front of them was made, process step by process step through this plant, and what defects each of those steps typically leaves behind. | |
| Knows which check applies at which point in the flow, from incoming material through first run and in process to final release and checks made at a supplier, and works to the inspection or control plan written for that stage. | |
| Pulls a sample that fairly represents the lot or batch, following the sampling plan or procedure written for that job, how much to take, from where, and what result accepts or rejects it, and knows when the plan calls for checking every piece or batch instead. | |
| Picks an instrument fine enough for the tolerance being checked, about a tenth of it or better, allows for temperature and the conditions on the floor, and cleans, handles and stores it so it holds its accuracy. | |
| Checks the calibration sticker and due date before using any gage, pulls and quarantines anything out of calibration, and understands traceability and what has to happen to product that was measured with a bad gage. | |
| Understands that two people checking the same item should get the same answer, knows what bias, repeatability and reproducibility mean, and can take a turn as one of the checkers in a study someone else runs. | |
| Calculates mean, range and standard deviation, plots and reads X-bar and R, I-MR and attribute control charts, tells control limits from specification limits, and stops and escalates when the chart shows a run, a trend or an out-of-control point. | |
| Runs the routine tests this plant does on its own product, follows the written test method, gets a reading that repeats, and recognizes when a result or a test has to go to an outside lab. | |
| Tags, segregates and writes up material that does not meet spec, grades the defect as critical, major or minor, tells the operator and supervisor in a way that gets the problem fixed rather than argued, and routes the report to the material review board for disposition. | |
| Fills out the inspection report completely and legibly, records as-found dimensions rather than just pass or fail, stamps acceptance only for characteristics actually checked, and corrects an entry the right way with a single line-out, initial and date. | |
| Keeps lot, heat, serial and date-code identity attached to material all the way through inspection, applies FIFO, shelf-life and age control, and checks certificates of compliance and analysis against what the job actually requires. | |
| Knows what the quality system requires of them day to day: where the controlled procedure and its current revision live, what goes into the approval or release package the customer requires, and what an internal auditor will ask to see. | |
| Takes part in containing a quality problem and finding its cause using 5 Whys, a fishbone diagram or an 8D, and supports the fix through error-proofing and 5S at the inspection station. | |
| Re-grades a pulled sample of boards against the published grading rule, compares the calls to the grade marked on the chain, and records the agreement rate so the mill knows its grading will survive the agency's reinspection. | |
| Identifies the wood defects on sampled boards or veneer by name (knots, wane, shake, check, split, warp, skip, blue stain, decay) and tallies how often each shows up by machine center, producing the record the mill uses to see what is driving downgrade. | |
| Measures sampled lumber or panels for thickness, width, length and squareness with calipers and tape against the target size and its tolerance, and records out-of-size results by machine center before a whole sort bin fills with miss-sized stock. | |
| Re-inspects a sample of graded and stamped panels against the published product standard and the grade sample panels, and records agreement plus the reason for any defect the graders missed. | |
Oregon publishes ten employability skills, the same statewide. Tick the three that matter most for this job.
Optional. This is where a skill list becomes hireable: what you look for, in your words.
WBTO studies the quality of its own assessment methods, including how consistently different experts rate the same skills. We would like to include your responses, with all identifying information removed, in that methods research, which may be published. Your name, organization, and school would never appear, and results are reported only in combined form. This choice does not affect this assessment or your participation in any way.
