Bryan Hancock

Manufacturing, in many instances, is still very much the lifeblood of the communities that shop floors are in.

And as an economic driver of differentiated outcomes, manufacturing as a sector still promises a meaningful upside.

And this notion of...

I'm Tyler and I'm going to be consigned to driving a forklift for the rest of my life.

While that may be the aspiration for some, for many, they actually think about, well, I'm digitally native.

And so what we actually see is many organizations channeling this transition from operator to a technician, where I may have driven a fork truck for the first couple of years because that was the need, but now I'm going to be managing a fleet of AGVs.

And so I think getting more organizations aligned to that vision for themselves and for their workforce optimizes for both the productivity of the organization, the career development and meaningful work and the types of skills that are actually required.

That's where our shop floors are today and many more are going into the future.

Rather than think about automation purely in the construct of using automation or digital to remove headcount, you should think about using automation to change the way the work is done to augment that person to make them better and more productive and then continuously upskill them as your manufacturing site continues to grow and be more productive.

More oftentimes than not, the attrition rate in the first 30 to 90 days is two times what it is for anything after that.

And so if you believe in the principle of a rising tide lifts all boats, that first 90 days is actually critically important to not only ensuring time to productive, but also retention.

Because what happens, I'm actually serving a client right now who the number one reason for work stoppage on one of their lines is that their employees aren't actually capable of doing the job in the time that's actually allocated to them.

And when you ask a couple of deeper questions, you find that the total number of hours that this person has spent actually thinking about this manufacturing line and even understanding their job is less than 20 before they're actually put on the line to actually do a highly complicated process.

And what happens then is the employee's frustrated because they're not doing their job right.

The line's not moving.

So their boss is frustrated.

Performance management kicks in.

People get aggravated at the level of performance and then employees leave.

And so this notion of digital,

allows us to use technology such as AR and VR, whether it's a simple process or even I've seen digital applications in AR for maintaining military aircraft.