Bryan Hancock

And when I approached Carolyn at the tail end of 2024, I think we both had a meeting of the minds that said, what we're doing today and the pace of change that's happening in the sector, whether it's through digital or AI automation, even the advent of Gen AI or agentic AI, and the impact that it's having on our shop floors of tomorrow was something that we felt was an inflection point for the MI to take a hard look at some of the things that they were focused on.

Many of the folks in the sector really think about the number of open jobs, right, that exist today or the jobs that will exist in the future as we nearshore much of our industrial base.

But what's interesting is if you unpack the actual true workforce need for our manufacturers, it encompasses a variety of different things, not just growth, but also why are people leaving and how to stem the tide there.

We have to replace those workers as well in many instances.

And then finally, you add in the upskilling or reskilling, and turns out the total addressable market of workers is two times what many people actually think is the true need of the manufacturing workforce.

one of the core differentiators for the incoming generations or youngest generations on the shop floor is I want to work when I can or when I want to.

And so those are the types of tools and innovations, whether it's flexible scheduling, whether it's incremental digital tools to help with root cause problem solving, or even digital work instructions.

As we think about problem solving and getting things done more quickly,

Another great example, Cure Dr. Pepper implemented a flexible scheduling module at one of their sites in less than 90 days.

And so I think to Carolyn's point, as we look at if they're asking for it, the art of the possible is effectively unlimited, but just do something.

In the Cure Dr. Pepper example, they started at one site, scaled to the rest of their network, and the thing that they found was

They gave their employees the ability to swap shifts and a powerful thing happened.

They also then started to attract workers that had previously worked there and in fact retired.

KDP also then attracted a workforce that was different for them to help them meet their business goals while also increasing the value proposition of their workers on the shop floor that were already there.

And so I think that's a really holistic way to think about there will be some unintended consequences and sometimes those consequences are positive.

There's a notion that stuck out to me from our research that basically said, for every $2 that you invest in digital,

You have to invest $3 in process optimization, and you have to invest $5 in talent and change management.

And so if you took that paradigm and applied it across many of the business cases that we see organizations championing, right, whether it's investment in Gen AI, whether it's investment in automation, the investments will not realize the ROI without investing in talent.

And so on the broader scale, I think we're seeing globally the facts can be shown that investing in talent is a worthwhile investment and acknowledging that there are organizations such as the MI that deliver a promising ROI that can help you with the problem that, frankly, everyone's facing.

in terms of our workforce.