How Connected Worker Platforms help increase the resilience of manufacturing companies. Guest article by Benjamin Brockmann, Managing Director Operations1.

The maxim coined by Friedrich Nietzsche in 1889, “What does not kill me makes me stronger,” no longer applies well to our times. This is especially true when it comes to training corporate resilience. Because resilience is not only important in individual life when facing personal stressful situations. Companies also need resilient structures—meaning the ability to identify crises and opportunities early on and withstand negative external influences, so-called shocks. This also includes enduring changing social, economic, and political conditions and adapting to new circumstances with as little loss as possible. This cannot happen without effort—in fact, companies that want to prepare for the challenges of the present and future must actively address and train resilience.

It’s not getting any calmer …

In recent years, the strain caused by external shocks has increased dramatically. In addition to the COVID-19 pandemic, new laws and regulations have kept companies on their toes, while soaring cybercrime and supply chain bottlenecks have sent shivers down their spines.

Anyone who believes the worst is over and that calm will return in the coming years is sorely mistaken. We live in an era of accelerating crises; the ice is thin, and unfortunately, after one collapse comes another. Therefore, resilience is not about fending off a single knockout blow, but rather about continuously practicing getting back up again and again. A company can only succeed if it learns from challenges, develops flexible defense strategies, and is always well prepared for crises. This can be achieved in different ways, for example by changing existing processes. The foundation of corporate resilience is digital.

For industry, a looming threat is unfortunately just gaining real momentum: the shortage of skilled workers. While this is already being lamented everywhere today, it will worsen in the coming years. According to the Federal Statistical Office, around 12.9 million people from the baby boomer generation will retire by 2036, taking with them years of hard-earned expertise. So, we are already feeling the first waves of the next major external shock, which threatens to hit us like a tsunami. Manufacturing companies are particularly affected. While knowledge workers are already benefiting from increased digitalization and the associated knowledge transfer opportunities, many operational employees have—technically speaking—been left in the Stone Age. In many factories, a dwindling workforce spends far too much time on repetitive, non-value-adding, and often meaningless tasks. According to our Connected-Work study, published in November 2022, employees identify the laborious creation and updating of documents (44%), data collection, interpretation efforts, and archiving (34%), as well as non-value-adding tasks like manual data transfer (29%), as the top three challenges. This lack of digitalization and automation of time-consuming standard work leads to dissatisfaction and declining productivity. A study by Campana & Schott in collaboration with TU Darmstadt shows that employees today clearly desire simplified and more efficient work processes through consistent digitalization. Without digitalization, skilled personnel quickly feel undervalued and are more likely to leave the company. Businesses that fail to act risk losing competencies that cannot be easily replaced.

Networking as a remedy

This means that companies must do everything possible to retain employees and their knowledge within the organization and preserve it for future generations. When digitally secured, this knowledge becomes the best weapon against the skilled labor shortage. Connected Worker platforms address this by centrally storing a company’s existing knowledge in the cloud and making it accessible via digital interfaces on machines or mobile devices. Knowledge can also be prepared, for example, in the form of videos, for easy retrieval. Thanks to simple, visual explanations, no voice output is required, and potential language barriers for employees with a migration background can be overcome. Companies also benefit from a digital strategy during the onboarding process. Employees are often trained by shadowing experienced colleagues. By providing intuitively understandable knowledge, new employees become productive faster, and experienced staff are additionally relieved. This allows them to focus on important tasks, such as inspecting machine components, rather than searching for information or copying data.

Instead of employee-dependent knowledge, the focus shifts to the central, well-structured organization of professional expertise, which agilely and value-adding links the production resources "machine", "employees" and "information". This type of knowledge organization ensures that knowledge does not become outdated and is always accessible. The interplay of resilience and Connected Worker platforms enables companies to take the step towards agile, lean and future-proof production, which is therefore extremely flexible and highly resilient. In this way, the factory can react more quickly to changes and thus increase productivity and profitability.

Conclusion: Don’t bury your head in the sand

Industrial companies that want to keep up with the times and remain competitive in the future must now face the challenges at hand and support and relieve their operational employees with well-thought-out digital solutions. Greater digital participation and the provision of cloud-based work environments increase a company’s attractiveness and strengthen employee retention. Securing jobs and limiting fluctuation increases the resilience of every company. According to Prof. Reimund Neugebauer, President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, “sovereignty and resilience in key, strategically important technology areas […] are essential cornerstones for securing the supply of important goods, the stability of supply chains and thus the innovative capacity of German companies.”

Overview of the opportunities a Connected Worker platform opens up for manufacturing companies:

1. Sustainable safeguarding of process knowledge
Digital capture and provision of knowledge in real time protect against demographic change and skilled labor shortages. Even less qualified employees can perform tasks.

2. Error reduction
Intuitive process guidance reduces rework, waste and complaints.

3. Faster response times
Real-time networking and context-based information provision accelerate problem-solving.

4. Increased productivity
By eliminating non-value-adding activities such as search efforts, data transfers, archiving efforts and the like, operational employees have more time for essential tasks.

5. Increased transparency
Process data and on-site findings can be easily collected and made available in real time.

6. Elimination of paper costs
Saving thousands of sheets of paper per year is also sensible from a sustainability perspective.

7. Reduction of documentation effort
Preparation work often involves enormous efforts to create and update work instructions and process descriptions.

8. Reduction of training effort
New employees are often trained by shadowing experienced colleagues. By providing intuitively understandable knowledge, new employees become productive more quickly and experienced employees are relieved of their duties.

9. Increased audit security
The simple proof of performed activities and existing qualifications increases audit security. For some industries, these certifications are core requirements for collaboration.

10. Enhancing the attractiveness of the work environment
New generations expect a work environment that can compete with the digital experience of private life.

11. Increasing work safety
Last but not least: By digitally recording risks, live communication, and sustainable evaluation of work safety inspections, you create a permanently safe working environment.

About Operations1:
Operations1 is the ideal Connected Worker platform for industry, enabling employee-driven production processes to be fully digitized: from activity planning and knowledge provision to intuitive process control, documentation, live analysis, and collaborative incident management. Due to its enormous scalability, the platform is used worldwide in more than 15 countries in various processes in maintenance, production, assembly, quality, training, and audits. Leading manufacturers from industries such as mechanical and plant engineering, consumer goods, or automotive, for example Bosch, Daimler Truck, ThyssenKrupp, Trumpf, KraussMaffei, or Stabilo, are already successfully working with Operations1 solutions. The software company, founded in 2017 in cooperation with the TU Munich, is led by the trio Benjamin Brockmann (CEO), Daniel Grobe (CCO), and Anian Ziegler (CPTO). To meet strong national and international growth, Operations1 opened a second location in Frankfurt am Main in 2020, in addition to its site in the Augsburg innovation park. More at http://www.operations1.com.