The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation among manufacturing companies across the world due to rising commodity prices and disrupted supply chains. Changes in business dynamics, evolving customer behavior, increased competition, and growth opportunities have been the key drivers behind the increased adoption of digital technologies and tools across industries. Technologies such as IoT, AI, and smart devices have given rise to the Connected Worker of the Future. Also known as augmented workers, connected workers are making the manufacturing process more efficient and safe. But who exactly are these connected workers of the future?

Who are Connected Workers Of The Future?

Connected workers are front line workers who execute their jobs with the help of digital technologies and the devices they naturally use in the flow of work (including phones, laptops, tablets and Smartglasses).  

They are empowered with real-time information about equipment, processes, work instructions, and more. A Front Line Worker Platform specifically focuses on optimizing the human element in your machine monitoring and service tasks.  These platforms do this by providing improving training, standardizing best practices for work execution and providing remote assistance when the unforeseen occurs.

Trends that are making Connected Workers an inevitability in the future

Today, more businesses are adopting digital technology. The global market size for digital transformation in manufacturing is expected to reach 642 billion by 2025!  This shows that digital transformation is not only coming but is seen inevitable by the marketplace.  Mckinsey goes even further and predicts that anyone who doesn't have a data driven operations in place will fall behind their competitors.

Besides the pandemic and change in remote working conditions, several other trends are contributing to making connected workers a business necessity.

• Developments in  5G Internet have made adopting cloud-based technologies easier for large enterprises as well as smaller companies.
• There is a growing skills gap caused by senior workers  leaving for retirement or other industries. These workers must be replaced with less experienced employees. This has created a fear for manufacturers of losing crucial tribal knowledge.
• The manufacturing process is becoming more and more complicated and it is difficult to provide effective and speedy training to the employees with paper based processes.
• New employees are digital natives and demand connectivity from their employers.
• IoT, AR, machine learning, AI, smart devices, and other technologies are becoming mainstream.
• Compliance has become a competitive asset and Connected Worker platforms offer improved compliance verification.
• A demand for sustainability requires greater operational efficiency to reduce environmental waste

Benefits of a Connected Worker platform

Workers become more efficient and effective when they are connected to their environments and given true visibility. They can make better, data driven decisions and can unlock several benefits such as:

• Reduction in human error
• Increased productivity
• Improved worker safety
• Saving valuable time and money
• Continuous asset monitoring
• Increase in Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
• Resolve issues and machine downtimes quickly.

Front Line Worker platforms such as Atheer help workers through applications like:

• Self Assist: Where workers can help themselves by accessing contextually rich training resources. This training is highly visual and can include videos, diagrams and photographs.  It vastly improves memory retention over strictly written instructions in three ring binders.
• Work Assist: Helps workers with their tasks by easily building, deploying, and optimizing visual work instructions. Also creates guides, SOPs, checklists and more with no added coding. These digital workflows help connected workers perform jobs to standard.
• Remote Assist: Powerful Augmented Reality enabled remote assistance sessions help on-site technicians solve complicated problems quickly.

Connected Worker technologies

Connected Worker solutions can consist of many different technologies to enable enhanced visibility into operations to ensure worker safety and reduce turnaround time.

• Platforms: This includes any software or hardware leveraging artificial intelligence and real-time data to help front line teams improve overall productivity.
• Interfaces: Modern technologies such as AR-enabled headsets enable peer-to-peer information sharing and resolving machine downtime remotely. These smart glasses provides an immersive reflection of the surroundings which otherwise would have been impossible to access.
• Smart sensors and IoT devices: Sensors attached to machines and equipment provide a holistic view of its condition and processes in real-time. This data helps prevent machine downtimes and dangerous incidents through the ordering of preventive or predictive maintenance. This data can be integrated into Connected Worker Platforms.
• Cloud and edge computing: Workers can communicate with each other or access resources from anywhere using the cloud.
• Improved microlearning: Upskill and train new employees rapidly with the help of visual work instructions and microlearning resources provided on-demand that are contextually rich and unique to each manufacturing environment
• Digitized work instructions: Adopting digital work instructions and SOPs in place of paper-based assignments to accelerate productivity and reduce time wastage.

Conclusion

Atheer offers an agile low code/no code Connected Worker platform with suite of modern digital tools to help the front line workers of the world’s leading industrial enterprises to work faster, better, and safer. It's designed to improve productivity metrics like Overall Equipment Effectiveness or OEE with Industry 4.0 technology.

We improve OEE by seamlessly elevating machine monitoring and service tasks to reduce downtime, improve speed of changeovers and capture inefficiency and eliminate waste. Atheer's Front Line Worker platform empowers workers to do their best work by getting rid of time wasting paper based processes that ruin their day by ending it with hours of dual data entry by automatically creating job reports when a job is completed. Atheer offers the work data you need to find gaps in your production line and iterate to continuously improve productivity. We help you take your best practices and standardize them to get the very best of your front line teams every time.