EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Addressing Manufacturings Six Big Losses in the COVID-19 Era
- The COVID-19 disruption has permanently changed how frontline workers are supported.
- With AI and Connected Worker technology, Augmentir helps ensure safety, quality and productivity.
- Engaged and enabled workforces help companies solve problems, and ensure business continuity during challenging times.
- Well-balanced, mature industrial centers of intelligence lead to increased ROIs.
These are the six most common causes of equipment-based productivity loss in manufacturing. But the COVID-19 pandemic is adding a new dimension to these productivity losses - the frontline workforce. Manufacturers are facing shutdowns, operational downtime, changeover increases, equipment failures, process failures, and production adjustments. In addition, manufacturers are dealing with these challenges while also implementing workforce measures like travel limitations and social distancing, which can slow production even further.
Augmentir’s Connected Worker Platform helps improve the safety, quality, and productivity of the frontline workforce in the COVID-19 era and beyond by offering suite of AI-powered tools designed to help industrial teams work independently, collaborate virtually, and continuously improve the efficiency of their operation.
Context
Addressing Manufacturing's 6 Big Losses in the COVID-19 Era
Key Takeaways
The COVID-19 disruption is changing how frontline workers are supported.
Many manufacturers are not stopping operations because of the COVID-19 pandemic but are being forced to change them significantly. While temporary measures, like social distancing, will eventually be lifted when the crisis is over, some changes, like remote assistance for frontline workers, are going to stay because they improve upon operational weak spots.
Six Big Losses in the Covid-19 Era
With AI, Augmentir Helps Close the Gap
Before the pandemic, manufacturers were already facing significant workforce challenges such as:
- A growing skills gap
- A loss of tribal knowledge as approximately 40% of the workforce retires in the next 5-7 years
- The need for upskilling and continuous improvement of the frontline workforce
With artificial intelligence (AI), Augmentir helps manfacturers solve these critical workforce problems, both during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.
How Augmentir Uses AI to Close the Skills Gap at the Moment of Need
How Augmentir Delivers Unique Value with AI
Augmentir's AI-based platform offers two core pieces of functionality:
- The ability to author and execute augmented, guided procedures helps close the skills gaps within your workforce, reduce errors, and improve productivity. AI dynamically delivers instructions matched to the proficiency of each worker, optimizing outcomes.
- Integrated remote collaboration tools help virtually connect workers to internal and external experts to quickly resolve issues. AI chatbots virtually support workers and accumulate tribal knowledge to help close skill gaps and reduce the impact as senior workers retire.
This core functionality enables independent work; it "instantly skills" the workforce with personalized instruction; and it embeds virtual support.
Augmentir's AI delivers unique value by using granular data to identify the largest opportunities across the frontline workforce, delivering instructions matched to the proficiency of each worker, optimizing outcomes.
Engaged and Enabled Workforces Help Companies Solve Problems
When a company has an engaged, enabled workforce, it can overcome almost any problem.
By focusing on industrial centers of intelligence, Bootleg Advisors helps manufacturers bridge the gap between the needs of the business and the ability of the workforce to execute in a secure and resilent environment.
Three centers of intelligence (COI) must be in balance to achieve and sustain results: The thinking center of intelligence, the emotional center of intelligence, and the action center of intelligence. At the core of these three COIs are AI, governance, and security.
The thinking center of intelligence
is the brain. Organizations need to be able to levearage internal and external subject matter experts (SMEs) and provide the workforce with access to useful content and technology.
The emotional center of intelligence
is the heart. Employees need to be engaged, and there needs to be a strong leadership and change management process to guide the workforce.
The action center of intelligence
is the body. Training, tools, and work processes are necessary components to keep the business running smoothly.
Well-balanced, mature centers of intelligence lead to increased ROIs.
A business operating with well-balanced and mature centers of intelligence is likely to see significantly increased ROIs. One Bootleg Advisors client recouped its investment in a solution based on the Augmentir technology in just three quarters, and the five-year ROI was 6.2 to 1.
Focusing on centers of intelligence can help manufacturers improve both workforce effectiveness and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). With every labor dollar saved, business can save an additional 3 to 8 OEE dollars in the big six loss areas.
Table 3 shows losses per area for top quartile and bottom quartile consumer packaged goods companies (CPG), and the overall gap in each area.
Solutions like Augmentir can help minimize these gaps, both during the COVID-19 crisis and after.
1,100
3
4
$65.3M
$22.6M
6.2
Top Quartile
Bottom Quartile
Gap
1.38%
16.2%
14.91%
1.17%
10.96%
9.79%
1.21%
10.32%
9.11%
3.81%
21.21%
16.40%
0.32%
9.36%
9.04%
0.00%
3.90%
3.90%
Top Quartile
Bottom Quartile
1.38%
16.2%
1.17%
10.96%
1.21%
10.32%
3.81%
21.21%
0.32%
9.36%
0.00%
3.90%