There’s A Better Way To Connect Workers In Manufacturing

Not long ago I argued that this is the year for connected worker technologies in manufacturing. It turns out I’m not alone. 

A recent Harvard Business Review survey found overwhelming support for connected work. 78% of respondents strongly agreed that, “To be successful in the future, our organization must connect and empower its firstline workers with technology and information.” 

For an industry as varied as manufacturing, this is as close to an overwhelming consensus as you get. 

With these results in mind, I want to pick up the thread of connected work in manufacturing. Only this time I want to go further. 

There’s a right way and a wrong way to connect workers in manufacturing. Getting it right requires understanding the unique contributions humans make to operations and how technology can help them go further. 

In other words, it’s not enough to just connect workers. 

Why are workers valuable? 

As fundamental as this question is, it’s worth asking. Our assumptions tell us everything. 

Too often firstline workers (also called frontline workers) in manufacturing are seen as resources for executing on a goal. This isn’t wrong, it misses a bigger point. Firstline workers are valuable for more than their ability to execute, sure. But they’re also an unparalleled source of process knowledge and creative problem solving. 

Caglayan Arkan notes in the report that firstline workers have a “wealth of insight.” He continues, “These workers have huge potential to promote growth, spark innovation, and accelerate a manufacturer’s success in the digital age—and that potential is largely untapped at the moment.”

This ability to innovate and accelerate growth is the key point. 

For connected worker technologies to make a difference, they can’t just improve execution. They have to empower workers to innovate.  

What connected work should do

Part of the urgency behind this article is the fact that “connected work” is quickly becoming synonymous with collaboration and communication. 

To be sure, these are important. 

But they’re not enough. When you limit yourself to collaboration and communication, the horizon is execution. You’ll never make it to innovation.  

At this point, we have great communications platforms. Zoom, Slack, Microsoft
MSFT
teams—the list goes on. All of these tools, however, need to work with an operations platform that let’s workers translate their creativity and innovation directly into process improvements. Connected work” should really be a transformation of how we work, not just a more efficient way of doing the same old things.

So the question becomes, What do connected worker technologies need to do to be truly effective? Here’s my perspective. 

Turn Tacit Knowledge Into Solutions – Manufacturing workers have a truly deep knowledge of their processes. That knowledge, however, isn’t truly valuable if the individual can’t act on it. In order for connected work to work, firstline need to have a way of converting their process knowledge into novel solutions. 

No Code – This is the foundation for bringing ideas into life. It’s what lets workers realize their ideas. No code development enables workers to turn ideas into software without needing the specialized skill set of a software developer. 

Enable Generative Problem Solving – By “generative,” I mean that they let you create new things. Whether applications, integrations, or workflows, connected worker tools have to enable first line workers to believe in the art of the possible. Without this, you just end up replicating old solutions on new tech. 

Agile – Manufacturing—as an industry and a verb—changes. If workers can’t adapt their processes as they change, then they aren’t truly connected to them. Connected worker tools should enable teams to live a culture where designing, testing, and iterating is standard.

Open Source – In software engineering, open source libraries and projects provide the foundation for new work. Why build from scratch when someone has built a foundation for you? For the last 20 years, enterprises have built their internal tools on open source libraries. In manufacturing, this is a radical idea. What we do in manufacturing is the equivalent to an author inventing the alphabet every time they want to write a short story. Connected worker tools should strive to be an open source for the manufacturing worker. How empowered is a worker if they need to bounce every solution to a vendor to realize? How empowered is a worker if they have to write a new driver for every device. Without this kind of content—an open source for manufacturing with APIs and means of integrating with other platforms—we’ll stay stuck in the same ruts. 

How to get connected work right. 

Ultimately, getting connected work right comes down to how you think about what your workforce could do. 

To get connected work right, you need to know your operations and the people on the first lines. What can they make possible?