Historically, UK manufacturers have outsourced many of their operations, but today, due to rising material and labour costs alongside continuing supply chain disruptions, over 55% of UK manufacturers are reshoring their capabilities. This growing movement to reshore operations is gaining momentum but is exacerbating the current labour shortage that the industry is facing, and without action, this will only worsen. For Andy Clarke, Principal SCM Consultant at Columbus, there are five key areas where manufacturers can help enhance and upskill their current workforce to cope with the challenges and exploit the essential benefits of reshoring.

Despite the current UK manufacturing labour shortage costing businesses £6 billion in lost revenue each year, over 65% of UK manufacturers have forecasted growth for 2025, and only 7% plan to achieve this by expanding their workforce. This means UK manufacturers must now prioritise upskilling and workforce culture.

Employees are one of the most important assets to manufacturers, and with the mass movement of reshoring, their workload is going to increase. But there are some key management and technology solutions that will enable manufacturers to find a way to ensure their workforce can keep up with the new pressures, without compromising operations. Here’s how.

AI needs to be the new fount of all manufacturing knowledge

The UK manufacturing industry workforce is ageing at a staggering rate, with many approaching retirement age. Their expertise and experience are invaluable in the short-term, but long-term, their tacit knowledge will be lost when they leave the company, which creates a major knowledge gap. With new talent in short supply, and manufacturing apprenticeships down by 42% since the start of the Apprenticeship levy seven years ago, what can manufacturers do to plug the knowledge gap?

Experience and tacit knowledge cannot be trained, it’s accumulated over years of hard-won experience. But what manufacturers can do is start to embed manufacturing-specific AI technologies into their business systems. Take predictive maintenance tools for example, which can help reduce downtime or intelligent scheduling to help optimise resources. From here, employees can harness the lost knowledge, and, through utilising AI tools, they can ask questions that previously only experienced employees would have known the answers to.

This approach ensures inexperienced workers become more efficient, as instructions, suggestions and solutions can be given in real time, instead of workers having to search through manuals or ask a more experienced colleague.

Augmented Reality comes into its own to futureproof manufacturing

Augmented Reality (AR) will play a key role in shaping the future of the manufacturing industry and its workers – whether to de-skill increasingly complex machine settings or understand operational workflows, there are three key areas AR can bolster the manufacturing industry and its workforce moving forward:

  • On-the-job upskilling: AR can allow manufacturing organisations to train their employees on-the-job, in situations that simulate the work environment, instead of theoretical classroom lessons. This can alleviate pressure on management, who are likely already stretched thin, to deliver holistic employee training.
  • Improved productivity and production quality: By replacing physical lists or manuals with AR-enabled smart glasses, not only does this enable workers to have instructions projected in front of them, keeping both hands free to focus on the task, but with integrated cameras and sensors, it can also ensure work is completed to the required standard.
  • Increased efficiency and reduced risk – AR can do it all: The introduction of AR onto the factory floor can significantly reduce safety risks. By replacing physical manuals with virtual projections, AR allows workers to maintain their full concentration on the task at hand. With the use of sensors and cameras, it can also ensure that safety standards are being met.

Make tech user-friendly!

According to 80% of manufacturers, digital skills are becoming harder to acquire. But what if the issue is not that employees don’t have the skills, but rather that systems and technologies have become too complex? In practice, many new technologies are not designed to be operated by frontline workers, user interfaces have become complex and training has become outdated.

Here, manufacturers can look to de-skill their workers’ activities and ensure the digital technologies they are implementing are more intuitive and user-friendly. This approach allows workers to complete tasks and operate digital tools without extensive training or specialised knowledge. Not only will this help increase efficiency in a time when workloads are becoming larger, but it will also help manufacturers to adopt a workforce culture of continuous improvement, with workers now developing their skillset on the job.

Frontline workers can also be included in the decision-making process throughout the digital transformation process, to ensure new tools are user-friendly and appeal to the new generation of manufacturing workers.

Turning business systems from digital filing cabinets into creative workspaces

Next up is transforming business systems into collaborative, creative workspaces. Nearly three-quarters of UK manufacturers are still reliant on legacy systems, creating disparate data siloes across the business. This poses a problem as the number of manufacturers reshoring rises and workforces become stretched. In response, business systems need to encourage more cross-functional collaboration to help increase productivity. But where should they start?

Advanced analytics and predictive AI can help manufacturing systems become dynamic, interactive environments where data is not only stored, but new data-driven insights, solutions and decisions can be established. But don’t forget about the human element too. This is where businesses need to encourage talented individuals from different departments to collaborate and solve operational problems creatively.

This strategic shift also supports continuous learning and improvement, with manufacturers working together and learning from one another. It also saves time by streamlining data entry and analysis, but also reduces the likelihood of errors, allowing workers to focus on more value-added tasks.

Intelligent, self-monitoring business systems – reduce the pressure on legacy expertise

Traditional manufacturing systems measure data based on human input. However, now with Machine Learning (ML) techniques, manufacturing business systems can generate their own set of aligned performance metrics based on certain high-level goals, such as business objectives. The intelligent business system will then measure its performance against the preset metrics and be able to identify any defects in the data it gathers, analyse it for the root cause and then advise workers on how to resolve the issue.

Using ML will help alleviate the reliance on legacy expertise to troubleshoot business systems and also help support them to build a workforce culture of continuous improvement, as this automated approach ensures issues and faults are identified and resolved in real-time.

Plug the manufacturing labour gap today

The reshoring trend among UK manufacturers is intensifying the existing labour shortage, posing a significant challenge despite strong forecasted growth. To be able to cope with the rise in demand that is coming with the reshoring movement, manufacturers need to focus on upskilling their currently stretched workforce and adopt a workforce culture of continuous improvement.

By focusing on these five core areas, manufacturers can enable employees to build a culture of continuous improvement and secure the industry’s future for many years to come.

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