Joe Monaco at the ISPI awards ceremony in Dallas, Texas, April 11, 2006.

Ohio-based Crown Equipment Corp's award-winning technician training program has been praised by the Monaco Group Inc, which operates the National Lift Truck Operator Registry (LIFTOR).

Monaco Group president Joe Monaco, who chaired the judging committee for the International Society for Performance Improvement's (ISPI) 2006 awards of excellence, said Crown's DP Quick Start program, based on human performance, had met more than 40 rigorous ISPI criteria (Forkliftaction.com News #265).

"There were more than 40 prescribed criteria that had to be documented by Crown. If the awards of excellence evaluators observed that a single criterion was not met, Crown would not have received the award," he said.

Each criterion corresponded to an element of a "systematic, data-driven approach" to develop the international product competing for the award.

"Crown's instructional system was engineered from deliberate collection of data, thorough analysis and careful rendering of logical conclusions about what works on the job and what doesn't," Monaco said.

Crown's training system was like the LIFTOR forklift operator management training system because both were human performance-based systems of instruction and focused on practice over theory.

"If any other forklift manufacturers, anywhere in the world, are using such a human performance technology approach to developing training, I would be delighted to know," Monaco said.

"With Crown's new instructional system, time to competence has been reduced to less than six months and, in some cases, three months." From examining Crown's website and information submitted to the April 2006 ISPI conference, Monaco said it took about 12 months to train a technician with old training methods.

The DP QuickStart program has reduced time to competence by 75 per cent, a Crown statement said.

LIFTOR is a forklift operator management and training system owned by New Jersey-based Monaco Group Inc.

Monaco said he had no affiliation with Crown Equipment Corp.