The Era of Connected Workers is already well underway

Industry 4.0 is about more than connected, intelligent machines...

Here‘s a hint: . . . it's about people!

(read in German)

Deserted factory halls in which autonomous robots diligently and tirelessly work around the clock to near ?perfect standards.

This is how the face of the 4th industrial revolution that we are currently living through, or what we like to call Industry 4.0 for short, has left its mark on our collective imagination.

And yes, there are highly automated production lines in which networked machines autonomously carry out a large part the work that used to be reserved to humans.

And yet industry leaders are not complaining about a lack of fast servers with AI chips or about excessive cloud infrastructure costs (although these are often outrageously high), nor about a lack of software modules to control and monitor the automated production lines. No, according to industry associations and analysts, the current biggest obstacle to productivity is a lack of qualified workers.

How do these seemingly contradictory statements go together?

Of course, highly automated production lines also require continuous maintenance and regular human support; the more complex these machines are, the higher the skill level requirements of those who configure, maintain and operate them.

In fact, even in highly automated networked factories, there are inevitable disruptions and process incompatibilities ?where automation stops and therefore the most flexible of all resources, humans, have to bridge the gap to keep the process running.

Even the much-hyped Generative AI requires a thoughtful employee who asks the right questions at the right time in order to then receive appropriate answers tailored to the respective case. ?The plausibility of of those answers must always be questioned and crosschecked which also requires quizzing human mind.

The productivity of Industry 4.0 systems is much greater than that of traditional factories, but their need for competent employees on the shop floor is just as great.

So, what is it that at least for now still makes humans irreplaceable in these environments?

Capturing information and data from the shopfloor

Whether a pipe is corroded, an electrical connector is loose, a seal is leaking, or whether the typical sound of impending bearing damage can be heard somewhere, no IoT sensor will record. These are however perhaps the most important data points when it comes to proactive prevention of accidents and longer term machine downtimes. Humans offer an unrivaled variety and flexibility of sensory capabilities and options for capturing information. We touch and shake, we smell, we hear and we capture context, all on demand and in virtually any accessible location.

With mobile technologies, information once identified can be transferred from the point of collection into the digital world very quickly and precisely. For example, condition data relating to valves, pipes or cable harnesses, perhaps also information about the smell of escaping gases or possible disturbing noises, can be transmitted together with precise geolocation data and a photo in order to provide the digital clone of the industrial plant with the information and data points that may be missing in the automated data collection.

Assessment, evaluation and person-to-person exchange of knowledge and information.

Another aspect of human contribution is our ability to interpret, discuss and solve problems flexibly, which is ultimately the basis of all innovation. We bring with us experiences that transcend the production system and place it in a context of ethical, ?social and possibly aesthetic values of our wider society. This is essential for any competent decision, which in many cases cannot be left to an algorithm or AI. In companies with multiple locations, this discourse that takes place between technical experts, frontline workers and management levels must of course also be able to be conducted on a digital level.

Mobile communication tools such as chats, discussion forums or wikis have long been commonplace work tools for white collar employees. It is high time that variants tailored specifically to the needs of industrial environments also find their way into production halls.

Black Box Syndrome: The New Opacity

However, there are also new challenges for employees in highly networked and semi-autonomous systems:

When experienced employees walk through the production halls in a traditional industrial company, they can quickly see which processes are currently being actioned. They know the press, the lathe or even more complex systems and can immediately see which phase of the production process the respective components of the system are in. The employee can assess accordingly whether everything is running normally or whether intervention may be necessary.

With the advent of Industry 4.0 in the form of robotic, networked multifunctional machines, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to understand what should actually be happening. Many an experienced employee is then left at a loss in front of a system whose current task is no longer immediately obvious to them.

The essential information about the process and any necessary input and output variables can at best be viewed on a control console and even there the picture will not be complete, as the entire process is never visible but only a section of it. Reliable quality assurance is also hardly possible without knowledge of the (possibly constantly changing) target state.

As a result, even a well-trained employee can no longer make competent decisions due to a lack of reliable information, for example about whether the quality of the output is right, when is a suitable time for a maintenance cycle, or whether it is safe to intervene in a process without stopping or negatively influencing previous or subsequent stages of the flow. This crucial information is reserved merely for a few engineers in often distant control rooms.

Transparency and access to process control and backend data is essential

So a return channel is needed. Employees must be able to gain insight into the process data at any time in order to be able to work efficiently in the future.

Here too, mobile technologies in the form of tablets, smartphones or, increasingly, wearables (e.g. smartwatches) are the solution. The same apps that transfer data to the backend system landscape can of course also receive available data from there and prepare it in a context-appropriate manner, so that employees can quickly get an overview of the current status of processes and machines using dashboards and reduced-complexity workflows. Supported by AI, for example, the question “When is a good time to install a new module in the B321C industrial robot?” could quickly provide a tangible answer, even in complex systems.”

Equipped with such assistants, completely new dimensions of application areas also arise for traditional industrial workers.

The hour of the Connected Worker: Digitalization has finally reached the industrial worker

Digitalization and networking must not stop with the systems but must integrate the employees.

The system consisting of people and auutonomous machnines must be rethought and viewed holistically within the framework of Industry 4.0 concepts. Employees in production must be included in the bidirectional data flow.

However, anyone who believes that production employees could simply be reduced to controllable cyborgs in this way has made the calculation without the transformative power of digital technologies. Because knowledge is power, access to information systems always means the opportunity to develop further based on the available resources, but also to return information, comments and opinions. The Connected Worker approach gives industrial workers a voice that will be heard in the increasingly important digital corporate world consisting of intranets, digital learning and talent management platforms or social corporate networks from which they have previously been largely excluded.

Virtual and augmented reality, where are we headed?

The cost-effective technology options are rapidly evolving, so that even ideas that were only recently viewed as extravagant and futuristic are now entering the realm of the possible.

In particular, augmented reality approaches, in which data and information are visualized in real time and superimposed on physical reality, are already being used regularly and support frontline workers in locating and identifying components, displaying pressure and temperature data where previously only a tangled network of pipes could be seen was, or show 3D models of construction drawings and circuit diagrams that provide transparency, increase productivity and reduce the risk of accidents.

What technical solutions are necessary to implement a connected worker concept?

A Connected Worker project does not have to start with every employee at the production site being equipped with their own tablet or smartwatch. It is often enough to provide a small number of devices per location so that they can be used as needed.

The software component is more important, because access to the backend system landscape of mobile devices is not trivial and also entails significant data security risks that must be carefully managed.

Modern production systems are in constant evolution and are developing rapidly, which is why the development of apps for such environments must, above all, be fast. Technology-assisted low-code and multi-experience approaches come in handy here. But by far not all solutions from this segment fit the requirements of a Connected Worker project.

HCLSoftware's Volt MX solution, for example, combines three essential pillars that are essential for a Connected Worker project:

·?????? A stable and highly secure middleware that provides connectivity to the multitude of data sources that represents an Industry 4.0 backend.

·?????? A high-performance multi-experience development environment for professional developers that allows you to develop native apps for all mobile device types and platforms from a single functional code stream, with access to the important native device functions such as geolocation, camera, speech recognition, barcode reader, position sensor, etc can be.

·?????? A no-code interface through which experienced non-IT employees at the level of the individual production sites (citizen developers) can independently develop applications for local needs and immediately make them available within the framework of a clearly regulated IT governance structure.

Equipped in this way, a successful start into a Connected Worker project should no longer be a problem.

The time to act is now

Connected Workers are more productive, make fewer errors, have fewer accidents, and thus allow factories to a achieve a significantly higher Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).

However many medium-sized companies run the risk of not embracing the possibilities of ?Connected Worker concepts due to assumed costs and complexity or because of fear of possible objections from works councils.

This is precisely why it is important to come up with pragmatic solutions the importance and value of which ?are immediately apparent, especially for production employees.

The first quick wins can be found, for example, in the digitisation of dozens of manual and paper-based processes, which are still common practice in almost all, even highly automated, production sites.

However, you should rely on the appropriate and scalable technology right from the start and also keep an eye on the possible cost trajectory that comes with future upscaling in order to prevent a successful project being choked by exploding cost.

Such a development, especially if it is driven from the grassroots by citizen developers, can quickly develop its own dynamic, which should under no circumstances be slowed down by the lack of scalability of the technology base.

If you would like to find out more about this, please do not hesitate to contact me via my LinkedIn profile.

Download Connected Worker Brochure (DE)

To find out more about HCL Volt MX click here?