How manufacturers are winning the fight for continuous improvement – by connecting shop floor know-how

Product quality can be a make-or-break for manufacturing success. But as the worsening skills shortage surges through the industry, manufacturers face new strains.

Today’s demanding customer base won’t settle for anything less than high-quality goods. In fact, 70% of consumers are willing to leave their current brand if they find a higher-quality alternative. The sooner companies can catch errors or mistakes before they become recalls, the better. In the U.S., product recalls rose to a seven year high in 2023 — an 11% increase from 2022 figures. 2023 was a record year for fines with $55.3 million issued.

Without the correct systems in place, the knowledge from experienced workers goes undocumented, and a lack of standardized processes stop manufacturers from capturing crucial information, the sort of information that could easily result in product recalls.

These quality challenges aren’t just about labor shortages. Every minute of equipment downtime is money lost. There’s no room for slack for frontline workers when every component on the shop floor must run like a well-oiled machine.

The average manufacturer deals with 800 hours of equipment downtime per year — more than 15 hours per week. That downtime comes at a cost, and it isn’t cheap. Unplanned downtime costs industrial manufacturers as much as $50 billion a year and can eat up to 1%-10% of available production time.

So where do managers go from here? Yes, automation can make a difference, but there are limits. Making the most of shop floor talent is just as important. Of course, machines and technology are getting smarter — but so are humans, and having the two work in tandem can help manufacturers reap real rewards in the fight for continuous improvement of product quality.

On manufacturers’ very own shop floors exists years of expertise from its current workers, the very human tools that will help manufacturers uphold quality standards. But how do you tap into this know-how? That’s where the ambition of the connected shop floor comes in.

Now, with the addition of connected worker technologies, manufacturers can tackle countless pain points felt by today’s companies, simply by connecting training and empowering frontline workers.

When you put the connected worker at the heart of your operations, the entire quality lifecycle is enhanced — workers are fully trained on the latest standards, new quality efficiencies can be realized as algorithms and data are analyzed, and the risk of product recalls are minimized.

What does this look like in action? Here’s what our team has seen on customer projects:

Out on the factory floor, a shop floor worker on connected worker platform runs on tablets in the hands of factory and maintenance workers, where they can scan QR codes on machines and other equipment. The worker is quickly brought to a centralized repository of all the information needed to operate the machine — digital standard work instructions, troubleshooting solutions, checklists, and more.

But what if the solution can’t be found in the community knowledge base? In that case, workers can take a video or photo of the problem and post an issue. Experts across departments can offer solutions in real time, often remotely, to find permanent solutions to recurring problems, leading to improvements in productivity — all helping to build tacit knowledge for frontline workers to address future problems.

Here's a recent project example: A manufacturer identified an issue with plant visibility that was leading to reoccurring downtime events at one of its plants. The 200+ strong workforce didn’t have access to tech devices on the shop floor, which often led to issues slipping through the cracks. Take for instance a recurring event on one of their lines, where the product wasn’t being correctly deposited into the packaging. This issue caused regular three-minute minor stops as the team struggled to fix it. Three minutes may not sound a lot but when you add these up over a year, that’s roughly 40 hours lost production time.

With their connected worker platform, the team created a call for help, including a video showcasing the issue to everyone. This caught the attention of one of the maintenance heads, who suggested a setting adjustment that the workers don’t usually review. With this collaboration, the issue was fixed for good, cutting out call times and resulting in fewer headaches.

But a connected worker platform is not just about sharing know-how and reducing downtime. It’s really about building towards a culture of standardization that spans the plant network. A culture of standardization is key to reduce losses in production that are caused by inconsistent work methods or knowledge gaps. If companies do this right, they can transform previously disjointed processes. But the scope for this technology must extend beyond the walls of one facility — it should be enterprise-wide.