The Next Generation Manufacturing Worker

“Manufacturers need to draw a strategic line in the sand and acknowledge that robots are no longer a novelty,” writes Brent Kedzierski, Chief Learning Officer at HumanWRKS.  “They are here to stay and are a necessity to achieve competitive production.” But what to do about human workers? In this article, Kedzierski makes the case for a radical rethink to the standard, task-based approach to manufacturing work.

The Covid-19 pandemic has been credited with prompting the “Great Resignation” as over 43 million Americans left their jobs in 2021. Many of these resignations were in low paying and low to semi-skilled jobs across industries such as leisure and hospitality. This has made job pausing and hopping easier in a sellers’ market.

The story that has received less attention is found across the manufacturing sector. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, manufacturing saw the biggest surge in resignations with nearly 60% of the workforce leaving for higher pay and more flexible schedules.

In January, Forrester Research reported that across Europe, 12 million jobs will be lost by 2040 through automation technologies. It’s clear that manufacturing workers see there is no escaping the fact that robotic automation and connected technologies will continue delivering productivity growth while outplacing workers.

Currently, factory usage represents over 90% of the robots that perform tasks today as they are increasingly leveraged to perform tasks once performed by humans. These manufacturing tasks include welding, drilling, fastening, grinding, buffing, polishing, painting, picking, and placing, assembly and disassembly, and testing, as well as inspection, packaging, labeling, and palletizing.

The workforce feels the pressure and is losing confidence in an industry where they see continued growth coupled with job losses. Manufacturing companies are feeling the pinch as employees become harder to recruit and retain.

But what can be done to address this loss of morale? To answer that, it’s important to understand the evolution of the task-based system.

Tasks are Organization-Centric

Throughout the twentieth century, management scientists applied a variety of work management techniques to standardize, automate, and perform tasks with precision, speed, and at the lowest possible cost.

In fact, the industrial movement generally worked off the assumption that humans were a poor substitute for automation. People get sick, complain, and require close supervision. Machines don’t.

Management consultants like Frederick Taylor proposed that by analyzing work, one best way could be found to complete any task. Over time innovations such as task specialization, assembly lines, procedural checklists, interchangeable parts, precision tools, and standardization have reinforced this idea.

These approaches have not only de-humanized tasks but have made them ripe for further automation. So, it should be no surprise that tasks are generally designed to leave little to the discretion of the worker. Anyone who has worked knows that this offers little intrinsic value in terms of enriching skills beyond the confines of the task. Production-based tasks represent absolute, repetitive actions that generally have a robotic or procedural feel. While they often produce good paychecks, they generally are designed to optimize the work process and not enrich workers.

In 1909, The Pittsburgh Survey was the pioneering sociology study of industry. One of its revelations was that “the task system tends to destroy a workman's initiative in his work, and he becomes practically a part of the machine.”

Industry has turned a blind eye to this insight for over 100 years as it has sought to continuously increase productivity while simultaneously reducing costs. We have seen this idea of machines and task-based work over individual human skills reinforced through generational innovations such as the assembly line, lean manufacturing systems and now the use of robotics.

 Skills are People-Centric

Tasks are designed to deliver direct benefit to companies. Conversely, the development of skills represents a more direct and transferrable intrinsic benefit that enriches individual workers. Most workers want to spend their days developing relevant and higher order skills that spark their curiosity, build their self-esteem, and improve their employability.

This means accumulating a portfolio of skills that enables workers to share great stories of how they applied their skills in distinctive ways to show judgement, innovate, problem solve and deliver other notable results that require a depth and breadth of experience. Skill-based experience coupled with challenge and the freedom and range to apply an individual’s human intellect, creativity, and collaborative powers represents the epitome of human growth.

Beyond Production to the Next Generation Manufacturing Worker

The opportunity in front of today’s workforce is that the traditional operating model for the manufacturing sector is blurring. Strategies that include optimizing process automation, additive manufacturing, and use of artificial intelligence (AI) are enabling new growth concepts to quickly emerge.

These concepts will drive the next generation of roles that leverage data-driven intelligence and the human-machine interface to continually reinvent and transform manufacturing processes and operating models. New skills will be required for a variety of shifting and emerging needs such as delivering higher value in smart product flexibility, mass personalization and advanced distribution strategies.

There are 3 key areas that I see emerging: 

#1: Collaborative Skills

We will see human collaborative skills at work to achieve the competitiveness needed to stimulate existing and new markets in advanced economies. It will be people who deliver innovations in distributed manufacturing that promote collaboration across supplier channels, making the mass production of scalable personalization affordable. It will be people who combine finished goods with services that leverage digital connection to customize and revolutionize the end user experience.

#2: Intellect 

We will see human intellect skills applied when success depends less on productivity or simply delivering finished goods alone. It will be people who deliver smart production systems capable of production and distribution based on real-time demand. It will be people who deliver new and “smarter” product design, development and placement that leverages, predicts, and responds to consumer needs.

#3: Creativity

We will see human creativity skills applied to address rising consumer demands for innovation. It will be people who create product designs and solutions inextricably linked to data-driven intelligence that promote recycling and reusing components and materials at the end of a product’s life cycle to eliminate waste through value recovery.

Conclusion

The idea of automation in manufacturing has always sparked debate. Will it bring a bright future or unleash a variety of doomsday scenarios and destroy the labor market?

For its workers, manufacturers need to draw a strategic line in the sand and acknowledge that robots are no longer a novelty; they are here to stay and are a necessity to achieve competitive production.

The global workforce needs some tangible assurance in a plan where automation shapes a future-focused employee value proposition - a future where human skills 1) serve as a force multiplier to power automation, and 2) act as an integrative currency for advancing a wider manufacturing ecosystem.

This can’t come soon enough to a disheartened workforce.

Workers deserve an employee experience that includes greater autonomy, flexibility, and opportunities for sustainable career growth. Given the increased focus on life purpose and fulfillment, today’s workers need to spend their time and energy on the development of enriching skills versus the execution of repetitive, lower order tasks.

Interested in learning more about this topic?

As COVID-19 restrictions ease and the manufacturing industry rebounds, industrial employers face an urgent imperative to prepare for the future of work. Learn how to navigate transformation, close the digital skills gap and push innovation, productivity and quality at our Connected Manufacturing Worker Summit. Join over 300 industry leaders on 27-29 June, 2022 in London and learn how to build a connected workforce to improve resilience, agility and growth in a recovering economy.