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Apr 15, 2022 | Time to read: 4 min
Ananth Uggirala is the director of product and UX at Drishti. Ananth joined Drishti full-time in 2017 and worked on building our groundbreaking product from an early stage. He is a passionate thinker about the potential of design and technology in improving people’s lives.
It’s probably not news that the number of people you rely on every day to shepherd production is shrinking. While retirements have driven a lot of this, more attention lately has been paid to manufacturers' post-COVID work models.
In a recent McKinsey article on the “connected workforce,” the authors point out that alongside retirements and new post-COVID realities, regionalization and the explosion of “shop-floor data” are driving manufacturers to rethink how production teams work.
Their conclusion: “These forces are creating a workforce that is more spread out, less experienced, and more overwhelmed by data with untapped potential.”
Now, consider the findings from a joint study commissioned by Deloitte and NAM to uncover the prospects for manufacturers looking to secure new talent. Their recently published multi-year study reveals factory worker sentiment and their desires for workplace improvements. The manufacturing workforce has put a greater emphasis this past year on their overall wellbeing, flexibility and technology as compared to previous years.
In comparison, those people surveyed who would consider manufacturing jobs, said that clearer career advancement “pathways” and personalized training programs would improve their chances of pursuing a career in manufacturing.
Yes, times are changing from a pre- to a post-pandemic world. And it’s important to understand how manufacturing work changes with it.
Engaging a new workforce through new ways of working
Post-COVID, a greater emphasis has been put on collaboration and technology. At the intersection are technologies that not only promote remote collaboration, but that also allow for flexibility in schedules when people need to swap shifts or take time off.
In fact, according to the Deloitte and NAM study, 57% of surveyed manufacturing executives say they’ve “enhanced technologies that employees use day-to-day” as a way to “elevate the experience of production workers.”
And while the McKinsey authors were dire in their assessment of the post-pandemic workforce, they were bullish on the potential impact of these technologies and pointed to collaboration tools specifically.
“We estimate that digital collaboration has the potential to unlock more than $100 billion in value — thanks in part to productivity boosts of 20 to 30 percent in collaboration-intensive work processes such as root cause investigation, supplier management and maintenance.”
At Drishti, we’re harnessing the power of video to enable our customers with remote learning and collaboration capabilities
Our customers currently use Drishti to retain the knowledge of retiring workers. It’s an investment in new talent and training. Our video-based application helps document issues on the line, both good and bad work practices, so that knowledge can be transferred easily.
We’re also developing new capabilities to drive greater day-to-day collaboration with a video-system-of record — enhancing the way production workforces team up to optimize lines and improve manual processes.
Video has a huge potential to explain everything that’s happened and is happening on your line daily. It boosts communications about production issues and events with objectivity. It can be used across shifts or even plants to enable flexibility and remote work.
Up until today, and throughout the pandemic, we’ve helped our manufacturing customers zero in on what’s important to see on their lines, so production stays on track.
Today, our manufacturing customers need a way to manage the issues Drishti uncovers; bottlenecks, micro-stops, variability, quality issues and more. That’s why we developed Drishti Collaboration Tasks. It’s a key functionality that enhances their current video documentation workflow and gives them the ability to send coworkers tasks. After all, the insights created from Drishti information is only as good as what you do with it.
These video tasks can be easily progressed to completion. They have a built-in workflow that helps production workers collect information based on video evidence. They’re great for initiating problem-solving activities and for organizing continuous improvement project tasks.
They can also be used to:
Develop well-documented problem statements
Share continuous improvement ideas across plants
Create consensus on potential solutions
Track line associate training performance and progress
Drishti was developed with the future of work in mind, and our new video collaboration functionality helps to drive quality, production and continuous improvement processes forward. Whether you have to put a team together around root cause analysis or a kaizen, Drishti can help detail all of the important information the team needs to prioritize activities and stay on the same page, no matter where or when they work.
Want to understand how Drishti can help drive new and better ways of working? Learn how HELLA used Drishti to provide a comfortable workstation for employees.
