Your people are the cornerstone of your business. For your manufacturing facilities to run productively and smoothly, you need your staff to be engaged and motivated. Manufacturers that prioritise investing in their people are in a better position to:
- Adapt to changes and unexpected setbacks
- Keep employee satisfaction high, with a positive impact on retention and efficiency
- Maintain a high-standard of output, meeting clients’ quality expectations
- Reduce errors, cut waste and eliminate unnecessary expenditures
- Identify efficiency improvements, reduce costs and boost profits
- Retain and attract skilled workers
According to Deloitte, nearly 45% of manufacturing executives have been forced to decline business opportunities due to a shortage of staff.1 It doesn’t need to be this way. Leveraging new technology is at the heart of retaining and attracting skilled workers by equipping them with what they need to do their jobs. Underpin these technologies with a secure and sophisticated ecosystem for seamless connectivity when it matters most: always.
“A people-focused business model enables a manufacturer to deliver on and with technology while keeping human beings at the forefront of their mission. For example, understanding how employees interact with the tools they use to complete their work allows companies to improve production efficiency and product quality,” 2 according to Jenifer Lambert, Chief Strategy Officer, TERRA staffing group.
Make your employees’ work lives easier and more rewarding.
Connect your workforce with the tools and support they need to get their jobs done more easily and efficiently. You can make their working lives easier by:
- Harnessing technology to reduce low-skill tasks
- Enabling more engaging and tailored training and upskilling
- Augmenting human skills with digital capabilities
- Providing real-time inventory
- Facilitating increased collaboration with suppliers and other sites
A great example of people and IT working together is using real-time video analytics to guide component assembly. Traditionally, some employees had to carry out a long series of complex tasks, such as when assembling a circuit. These were later tested, and components that failed were sent back for correction or scrapped.
Today, with a pair of smart glasses, augmented reality technology can guide an employee through the steps as they go. There’s less stress and pressure on the employee, and the number of errors should be reduced. This can have substantial benefits in terms of cutting waste and increasing throughput.
Make collaborating with suppliers throughout your supply chain simpler and easier.
With an ecosystem built upon robust connectivity, you can, for example, help ensure that sharing product design plans and delivery schedules is fast and seamless. With increased ease of communication across your facilities, partners and suppliers, your staff can focus on doing their jobs with fewer frustrating connectivity-based hitches.
Additionally, by leveraging 5G and intelligent sensors, your workforce can have access to real-time inventory. This facilitates easier planning. This also allows your staff to spend less time figuring out what they have and where it is, and more time on high-value tasks.
By providing the connectivity and technology to make the working lives of your employees easier, you can simultaneously boost employee productivity and engagement. Happier, more effective employees make for a healthier manufacturing business.
Make your workplace safer and healthier.
There are many ways technology can make safeguarding your staff easier, as well, including
- Enable real-time monitoring and automated safety shutdowns
- Automate dangerous or highly-laborious tasks and processes to reduce the likelihood of accidents
By providing high-performance, low-latency connectivity throughout your facilities, you can monitor machinery and robots, and improve safety. Using intelligent sensors, you can gather data and use artificial intelligence (AI) to implement proactive safety measures. For example, using intelligent video analytics, you could automatically shut down machinery when somebody enters an off-limits area or isn't wearing the correct safety gear.
Attract and retain top talent.
With skills shortages continuing to plague businesses globally, manufacturers need to prioritise attracting new workers and retaining the ones they already have. There are three main areas to focus on, and each can be enabled using technologies:
- Diversify and expand your prospective talent pool
- Implement reward, development and recognition programs
- Be an inspirational, forward-thinking and socially responsible company
A wider, more diverse prospective talent pool makes finding staff much easier. Obviously, not everybody can work from home. But with the latest collaboration tools, many manufacturers are leveraging technologies such as automation, AI, robots and drones to reduce the number of jobs that need to be done onsite.
By leveraging the data insights a connected factory can deliver, you can put in place recognition programs that drive employee development. Technology and people can be complimentary. AI and other tools should help reduce the volume of monotonous tasks that need to be done, freeing staff up for more rewarding work.
By understanding staff strengths better and creating a culture of recognition and development, you can make your people feel more valued and aligned to the success of your business.
The right network can help you make your plant operations and operational technology even more people-focused. Leverage technologies underpinned by seamless connectivity to boost engagement, training and safety. With that, you can become an even more attractive and innovative business—and provide a working environment that benefits both employees and shareholders.
Let’s co-innovate and enable incredible, people-focused wins across your entire workforce. Verizon has worked with many manufacturers to help them put people at the forefront of their business. Our industry experts have decades of relevant experience, enabling them to provide practical and effective advice. Our global network, computing and security expertise, and extensive ecosystem can help you put those ideas into practice. We can help you de-risk transformation, boost productivity and achieve the promise of Industry 4.0.