It’s nearly impossible to ignore talk around Industry 5.0, the next digital phase of industrial operations where human-machine partnership becomes the focus.
Consulting firms like Deloitte and Boston Consulting Group have built entire practices around this convergence of information technology (IT) and operations technology (OT). Previously, publications and news outlets have latched onto the message that advanced robotics and automation will “make humans obsolete.” Their argument was supported by the significant growth of advanced technology in the industrial workplace, from robots to autonomous vehicles to virtual reality glasses. But that was more science fiction than reality.
Industrial companies today are realizing that humans have to remain in the loop to ensure automation and robotics investments generate the required ROI.
In real life, AI and robotics technology is requiring specialized skills and tools that bridge the promise of our industrial future with the reality of today’s human-rich factory floors. Labeled connected work, it leads with a viewpoint that digitally connected workers will deliver the greatest productivity, quality, and safety improvements to industrial operations in the near and mid-future.
60% of executives believe Industry 5.0 initiatives look good on paper, but prove more complex than expected.
Cisco survey
Robots and smart machines are increasingly prevalent in industrial and manufacturing environments, requiring new approaches to how work gets done. The concept of a “digital twin” a digital equivalent of a physical object, or human, or end-to-end process, is now frequently used as a legitimate description of the human-machine relationship.
But the terminology and hype gloss over a fundamental difference between humans and machines. Robots and digital systems speak exclusively in absolutes, binary, ones and zeros, and human workers don’t. For these advanced technologies to be effective in the factory of the near future, both humans and machines must adapt so they can truly “talk” with one another.
This is where connected work changes the game.
Connected work is a way to codify work so interactions between humans and machines can be executed, measured and optimized. Through the lens of connected work, machines and humans are essentially colleagues working together. This collaboration, when done right, can result in measurable increases in overall productivity, quality, and safety across your operations.
Human workers have traditionally been the “doers” in industrial settings. But we’re now in the midst of a paradigm shift where machines are increasingly able to perform the manual, repetitive and often dangerous work once done by humans. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, overall employment of assemblers and fabricators is projected to decline 14% from 2016 to 2026; it cites increasing productivity due to advances in automation and collaborative robotics as a primary reason for the reduced demand.
That said, there is a chronic labor shortage in manufacturing, resulting in higher unit labor costs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also reported that 20 of 21 manufacturing segments have seen increased labor costs, by as much as 8% in some cases.
2.4 million manufacturing jobs will be unfilled by 2028
Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute, Skills Gap and the Future of Work Study
Increased automation and a reduced need for manual work mean that human workers are no longer just laborers; they are change agents, tasked with driving the overall orchestration of machines including set-up, maintenance, inspections, troubleshooting, and reconfiguration, among dozens of others.
In order for companies to keep manufacturing costs under control, humans and technology need to work in concert to deliver the maximum productivity from every shift, line and plant. Transparency, access, and communication are at the heart of that productivity. If the human worker is the change agent tasked with reconfiguring or repairing a machine-based system, it is vital that this communication happens quickly and clearly.
Information related to the operation of the plant is readily accessible and presented for consumption by machines and humans. This means paper-based work processes must first be digitized so they can be shared quickly and easily, with the ability to modify them in real-time if needed.
Access is two-fold: access to job and process information to do a specific task, and access to specialists who can help troubleshoot or approve a particular situation. Implicit in access is that information is captured at all points and from as many sources as possible. For example, if workers can capture video of a machine while performing clean-inspect-lube (CIL) processes, they can help maintenance teams monitor and account for minor issues and avoid catastrophic failures.
Feedback is also two-fold. Employees need the ability to communicate with others and to provide input and suggestions to management and specialists, e.g. safety or maintenance teams. And management needs to communicate back to employees, providing recognition for work well done. Two-way feedback is key to driving repeatable continuous improvement wins and empowering frontline workers to engage in process improvements that drive major efficiency gains over time.
Here are three ways connected work brings together the best that humans and machines have to offer, unlocking rapid time-to-value for industrial companies.
Today’s production environment is marked by several factors that make systematizing the process of work more important than ever before. Production runs are considerably shorter, and made up of many individual SKUs. Legislation and worker preferences mean employees have different roles throughout the work day or week. And employees want to play a more active role in the overall success of the business.
In this environment, rigid, paper-based processes do not work. Your workers need access to interactive workflows – and that can only be done digitally. Which steps should they perform? Which steps are dynamically completed through direct, human-machine information exchange or enterprise business systems?
With connected work, the entire process is codified, digitized, and communicated to those who conduct the work: your frontline workers. And they, in turn, have the ability to make the process even better by inserting annotations or video snippets directly into the job comments.
Preemptive and on-the-fly safety and maintenance checks demand quick yet comprehensive responses. What’s the best response to an out-of-scope situation or machine reading? When equipment goes wrong, data streaming off a sensor isn’t good enough. You need to define clear corrective actions with procedures that can be easily and quickly updated.
Connected work enables very specific corrective-action mapping and gives you the ability to create distinct responses to error conditions, effectively allowing machines and humans to communicate. Connected worker technologies can “listen” for the condition, automatically trigger an alert, and rapidly deliver clear, precise instructions to workers about what to do next.
When you digitize workflows and make work performed by both humans and machines more consistent and transparent, so you can begin to collect critical data about your operations.
By combining the data that machines produce with the data related to human action, you get a true picture of the work’s “digital twin” and can more easily and quickly identify and implement changes to improve productivity, quality, and safety.
With connected work, you’re able to more easily stay on top of changes to procedures and keep the system, the overall standard work, current. Digital processes can be easily updated in real-time and quickly distributed to everyone who needs to know, so they, and the machines they work with, are always on the same virtual page.
This creates a culture of continuous improvement, one that is systemically enabled by a connecter worker platform that centers the worker and their contribution to the operation. Once the flywheel starts, it compounds its returns and provides hockey stick gains over time.
The promise of Industry 5.0 is still a long way off for many large organizations. Connected work delivers a bridge to the future, enabling humans and machines to work seamlessly together.
This means moving beyond guessing what’s going to happen next with a machine, to predicting outcomes and responding to situations in real time, based on data. It also means viewing the work as a system, surfacing the gaps, and closing them quickly with data-driven decisions.