Kevin Carpenter Vice President, Manufacturing Services, Rockwell AutomationKevin is a critical resource and trusted cross-functional engineering executive to organizations seeking cutting-edge approaches to attaining new heights of growth, capability, resiliency and sustainability.

Kevin leads, manages and coordinates all activities associated with advanced manufacturing technology, manufacturing engineering, operations and risk management, and manufacturing execution systems/IIoT deployment for global manufacturing operations.

SMART MANUFACTURING’S MOST IMPORTANT ENABLER:

YOUR WORKFORCEYour manufacturing is only as smart as your people

Executive SummaryHow well you prepare your workforce to adopt new technology in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) can predict how quickly you realize value from your investment in smart manufacturing. This whitepaper addresses five questions around preparing your workforce to take advantage of smart manufacturing and support your digital transformation journey.

5 QUESTIONS TO ASK: Preparing Your Workforce for Smart

Manufacturing and Digital Transformation

If smart manufacturing can automate more processes and operations, what happens to the people doing the work?

Robots will not replace humans. Robots will augment

human thinking and empower people to do more than

ever imagined.

How do we strengthen competencies and

fill skills gaps?

3 things to do right now.

Are the consumers of smart manufacturing

ready to handle all of this real-time data?

Probably not. Use this guidance to keep

from overcomplicating the process.

What should workers be prepared to do?

Understand and implement the data strategy to make

real-time decisions.

What is the biggest barrier to deploying

smart manufacturing?

Your people and how prepared they are to leverage technology

to elevate their thinking and make more

complex decisions.

Industrial companies are taking smart manufacturing strategies from the whiteboard to the production floor to bring new value to their operations. Collaborative robots, flexible automation, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and other technologies enabling smart manufacturing hold the potential to drive significant productivity gains, which will accrue to the benefit of companies, their workers and the global economy.

Smart manufacturing is the gateway to digital transformation. Digitally transforming operations into a Connected Enterprise will help improve almost any aspect of performance, because connected smart devices open new windows of visibility into processes. Data and analytics enable better and faster decision-making. Seamless connectivity spurs new collaboration.

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What is the biggest barrier to deploying smart manufacturing? Smart manufacturing, or the connected, digital factory, is the connection between technologies — AI, advanced robotics and augmented reality — and plant floor software, including manufacturing execution systems (MES) or manufacturing operations management (MOM).

While many factors contribute to the success of smart manufacturing, one of the biggest barriers to reaching your smart manufacturing goals can be your people.

How well you prepare your workforce to adopt new technology in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) can predict how well and how quickly you realize value from your investment.

That’s because smart manufacturing is only as smart as its people. Securely connecting people, processes and technologies has significant workplace implications. Those who forge ahead and smartly deploy technologies will achieve breakthrough improvements in performance. Adoption leaders will be capable of game-changing innovation.

This time it’s differentIn the past, each evolution of manufacturing has focused on automation improvements that enhance a workflow or process that’s linear, sequential, repeatable, measurable and optimized.

The discussions of advanced and emerging technologies are becoming more common across enterprises, yet using these technologies for significant change can feel uncomfortable to employees because the path requires different ways of thinking in new and evolving territory.

And no matter where you start or which enabling technology you choose, your people will feel the impact. You are changing the way they operate. The more you automate production, the more you are asking your people to elevate their thinking and make more complex decisions.

It all starts with your people. This whitepaper addresses five questions around preparing your workforce for smart manufacturing and digital transformation.

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If smart manufacturing can automate more processes and operations, what happens to the people doing that work? At its core, the “smart” in smart manufacturing – things like advanced robotics – allows us to find different ways to relieve people from tedious, repetitive tasks and free them to do more complex work, like exercising judgment, making decisions, applying creativity and innovating.

Programming a robot to do something is relatively simple; mapping an entire operation remains something only humans can do. With AI, AR, machine learning and advanced robotics, people are unclear about what manufacturing jobs might look like, or their roles next to robots.

Let’s be clear: Robots will not replace humans.

Robots will augment human thinking, and empower people to do more than ever imagined. This is the space that combines the imaginations of people with the intelligence of machines, expanding human possibility.

Stop thinking human or machineThe real power is human plus machine. Technology like AI augments and empowers human potential and leads to breakthrough innovation.

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Enterprise Strategy Smart DevicesData Strategy Software

Actionable Information with PEOPLE as the foundation

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This innovation is crucial because nearly 3.5 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S. will need to be filled over the next decade. The skills gap is expected to leave 2 million of those jobs unfilled. More jobs will be available than the number of people who are qualified to fill them.

This situation puts the responsibility on companies adopting smart manufacturing to upskill workers and attract and retain the right talent to continue the digital transformation journey.

What should workers be prepared to do? To realize the value of smart manufacturing, industrial companies will need to provide opportunities for training, education and upskilling so workers can acquire new competencies around advanced technologies and their associated data.

It’s all about dataMany of the future roles will in some way become associated with understanding data structures and data strategy. That’s because smart manufacturing is more than throwing a robot on your line. You have to map the problem(s) you are trying to fix; the desired outcomes and improvements; and how the solution will be used to solve the problem(s).

Every step involves using data to make decisions.

How much is too much?As a result of smart devices, interconnectivity and the convergence of Information Technology (IT) and Operations Technology (OT), many companies are amassing and storing too much data, making it difficult to extract actionable insights.

And while companies can store all of this data, decision-makers must still know the business outcome and what data is needed. Otherwise, time and money is wasted on gathering data that just won’t lead to anything productive.

Data volumes can quickly get into petabytes. (A petabyte is 1015 bytes or 1000 Terabyte). Here’s how quickly that adds up: An oil and gas company can collect 500 GB of data per day from a single compressor, and data volumes can easily exceed a petabyte in one year.

If you’re downloading and playing one petabyte of MP3 encoded songs it will take about 2,000 years to play your entire list.

For most companies, Big Data is too much data.

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FOR MOST COMPANIES, BIG DATA IS TOO MUCH DATA.

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Are the consumers of smart manufacturing ready to handle all of this real-time data? No one needs or can even handle all of that data.

It’s easy to overcomplicate this process, and that’s why you need a clear data strategy and skilled people to implement that strategy.

What you’re looking for is data that supports:

Your enabling software should integrate edge-to-enterprise analytics, machine learning, IIoT and AR into your industrial operations. The goal is to simplify data management, and support the sourcing, contextualizing, synthesis and orchestration of the information needed for every job role across your operations.

Do I need a data scientist?While every situation is unique, statistics show that companies working with big data have realized that up to 80% of a data scientist’s time can go into the unproductive task of data cleansing for analytics.

QUALITY

EFFICIENCY

SCHEDULEATTAINMENT

ASSET UTILIZATION

PRODUCTIVITY

DATA

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Rather than collecting and storing every bit of raw data:

• Start by identifying the potential increased business value; then

• Leverage domain experts’ knowledge of causality in industrial systems to contextualize and model the data that drives the business outcome.

What you need is a workforce that understands what you are trying to do with data (your data strategy). Without that strategy, your people will not have a strong connection between what you are trying to improve and the outcomes smart manufacturing will help them to achieve.

What you do need is an industrial engineer who understands both data and manufacturing processes, and how to manipulate data at every stage of a process to create an analytic.

Properly applying dataReal-time data taken directly from the machine or operation is a primary benefit of smart manufacturing. If that data is not applied properly — or if no action follows — then there’s no benefit.

Being intentional about data strategy — when you need real-time data and how you will use it — gives you a metric for action, or a way to enforce what you see. That’s a benefit you can get as easily with a well-trained industrial engineer as with a full-time data scientist.

How do we strengthen competencies and fill skills gaps?We’ve already established that the move to smart manufacturing and the IIoT is putting additional demands on your workforce and creating a need for new skills.

There are three things you can do right now to ensure that you have the right skills now and in the future, to realize the value of smart manufacturing:

1. Create a workforce development strategy

2. Empower people with actionable information

3. Partner with universities and tech schools

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1. Create a workforce development strategy

Specialized training can mitigate workforce challenges.

For example, the convergence of OT and IT is raising questions within manufacturing about who will design and oversee the complex network infrastructures required to take advantage of the IIoT. Industrial networking courses and certification allow you to realize the significant benefits to be achieved in productivity, quality, and safety.

Although the most common strategy for upskilling employees in advanced manufacturing is to complete a skill gap assessment and train in-house. Companies also are recruiting STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) talent where gaps cannot be overcome, and offering outside vocational training to existing employees.

2. Empower people with actionable information

Data from connected equipment, lines, processes and facilities is flowing into factories faster than ever before, and the challenge is to make that data useful for the right purpose, at the right place and time.

That’s because understanding metrics is one thing; understanding why those metrics matter is another. Select software that relieves your workers of the burden of finding the data they need and provides instant access to actionable, real-time, data-driven insights so they can be more effective and more innovative.

3. Partner with universities and tech schools According to the World Economic Forum, the top skills needed to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution have shifted: Complex problem solving, critical thinking and creativity are the top three, and emotional intelligence has been added to the list.

These are not the skills of machines; this is the work of humans.

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Companies, universities and tech schools will need to work together to upskill workers and prepare the future generation to flex as needs change.

An example of collaboration between industry and academia is the recent partnership between

Rockwell Automation with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to form the

Connected Systems Institute (CSI).

CSI brings together faculty expertise in disciplines from automation to business intelligence, to contribute to diverse fields that include the use of sensors, risk management through cybersecurity, the conversion of big data into knowledge-based systems, and changes in organizational culture that accompany connectivity.

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Use Better Data and Digitized Processes To Revolutionize Your BusinessSmart manufacturing is the gateway to digital transformation. Connected smart devices open new windows of visibility into processes. Data and analytics enable better and faster decision-making. Seamless connectivity spurs new collaboration. The Connected Enterprise makes all this possible. It converges plant-level and enterprise networks, and securely connects people, processes, and technologies.

Seamlessly bridge IT and OT

Access a centralized dashboard and a single source of truth

Easily connect users to data and insights from across the enterprise

Access real-time data through an easy-to-use interface

Use augmented reality to enhance effectiveness and productivity

CONNECTEDENTERPRISE CHECKLIST GET ACCESS TO INTERCONNECTED DATA AND:

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SummaryThe most successful business of the future will be the one that brings operational intelligence to its human developers. This is how you’ll gain insights that enable you to innovate the way you manage your enterprise, how your workers work and how you deliver solutions to your customers.

People should be the center of your smart manufacturing universe — people who will engage with machines to visualize and optimize data — and then act on what they see and know.

As technologies are adopted at a depth and breadth we’ve never before seen, attracting, nurturing, upskilling and retaining the right talent to harness that technology must become a priority.

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Publication CIE-WP010A-EN-P –April 2019 Copyright © 2019 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printed in USA.

Trademarks not belonging to Rockwell Automation are property of their respective companies.

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